This past weekend seven coaches – Greg Seed, Lyle Chapman, David Micklefield, Carmen Faulkner, Donelle Gillis, Jan Crerar and Geoff Power – took 39 rugby players to Victoria.
The Salmon Arm Secondary Junior Boys played seven-a-side versus Claremont school in Victoria and had a rude awakening to a team that has been practising together for over a month. Adam Fiebelkorn and Josh Cline were standouts for the team on this day.
The Jewels’ seven-a-side team sparked a great game and defeated the Claremont Spartans 27-12 with solid efforts by Kaisha Fagrie and Ebony Derksen.
SAS senior boys joined forces with Claremont players to make 15-a-side to play a game versus an Ottawa high school team.
Final score was 17-5 for Ottawa, but SAS was on the doorstep a lot more than the score shows.
Great efforts by Nick Chesney and Brandt Adams.
Then onto Shawnigan Lake which has the Team Canada facility where the Canadian U18 coach put the SAS boys through their paces.
The grand finale was in the Cowichan high school field ‘mud bowl.’
The Jewels were in tough versus an AAA championship team that had talent and size in their favour. The opposition dominated the scoreboard but were slowed down by efforts of Krystine Hamre, Amy Sandy and Juli MacLean.
The junior boys used their newly acquired Team Canada skills and lost a very close game of 12-10. Drew Bannister, Alec Crawford and Tyson Qiodravu had excellent games.
The senior boys came up a little short, but coach Chapman acknowledges Jagr Chesney, Miles Brown and Hunter Lampreau for their efforts.
Tour MVP players who gave it their all in every game and never gave up were junior player Chad Baker, Jewels player Avia LaTosky and senior player Bryce Hicks.