Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School's rugby program has grown to four teams and 50 players this season.
For the first time since Kameron Taylor, the program's head coach, started promoting rugby at the school they now have a seniors boys, senior girls, junior boys and junior girls teams. The teams have been practising and playing games for the past several weeks before the first half of the season ends at the end of October.
"We started to practice the first week school started, I think we were one of the only sports that did. Every other sport started the week after," Taylor said. "This sport, it's not for the faint of heart, but it's great to see so many kids out again and playing high school sports. It just came on fast and furious."
Taylor said both the girls and boys teams have had the chance to play a few games already against their perennial rivals the Lake City Secondary School Falcons. The girls' teams especially did well against the Falcons in mid-September, winning three games on their home turf. This year marks the first time Taylor had enough girls to field both a separate seniors and juniors team.
"All the girls are applying what they have learned from last year and this year. We had a lot of junior players get a lot of game time based on that. We had a competitive game, a development game and another competitive game," Taylor remarked.
Taylor said he has especially appreciated the dedication of his players, even with other sports running at the same time as rugby during the fall. He is looking forward to developing their abilities ahead of the second half of the season in April next year.
Outside of the high school, Taylor is still promoting the growth of a rugby club in 100 Mile House. Over the summer Taylor said eight house players were practising to play for the Williams Lake Rustlers club. Last month from Sept. 21 to 22 they travelled to Kamloops to compete in a rugby sevens tournament, where seven players play rather than 15, where they came fourth overall.
"We won all of our pool games so we seeded first in our pools, so we got to play in the final four. We lost our first game the next day and the second game shortly after that but we finished fourth out of 16 teams," Taylor said. "It's been 15 years since the Williams Lake Rustlers have put a team in that tournament, so for them to finish fourth out of 16 was an accomplishment."
Taylor remarked both he and the Falcon's coach Braden McCallum will be putting together a provincial/regional team next summer based on the talent available to them.
"I have a 10-year plan of maybe eventually having a club team here. We're getting close to having enough players to field a U18 team and it has taken some time to build from one player to four players to 10 players. I'm hoping to see 15 club rugby players playing next year."
As always Taylor said he is looking for and welcoming new coaches to join his coaching team. While a mix of community members and former students including Chris Thain, Elias Moore, Natalie Cox, Isabella Robbins and Emily Machado will come out to help him when their schedules allow, he could always use some additional coaches to work with the kids.
"I'm kind of that head coach who oversees and makes sure we're doing what we're doing and that all the other coaches understand our team's philosophy as far as what we want to build here and what we're looking for out of our athletes," Taylor remarked. "Having fun is of course the most important part, but with a little discipline."
