St. Albert is learning the hard way what it takes to play premier women’s rugby.
“One thing that we’re missing is experience,” said prop Alicia Sliwkanich, after the first division line-up was walloped 70-0 by the Lep/Tigers on Saturday at the Leading Edge Physiotherapy Fields. “Our team is quite young compared to most of the teams in our division, and that’s been evident in some of our losses this year. The game is a little bit faster at this level and you have to make your decisions a little bit faster. Until you have more game experience and more years playing rugby, it’s a little bit tougher step to make.”
The ninth loss in 11 matches (two wins were defaults by 20-0 scores) marked the sixth game St. Albert failed to register a point. In three losses against the Lep/Tigers, the firsts were outscored by an incredible margin of 190-0.
“It would have been more fun if we scored more points but it’s still fun to play in premier,” said Sliwkanich, 26, a veteran of the St. Albert women’s program from Fort Saskatchewan. “We’ve learned a lot this year. We’ve gotten better throughout the whole year. Our skills have gotten better. Our fitness has gotten better. Our mental ability to play at this level has gotten better, as well as our decision making too.”
The last time in premier St. Albert failed to win a game was in 2006.
“St. Albert has never had a premier team consistently so those players we’ve had at our club that played at that national level or the Alberta level have always had to leave because you need to play highly competitive games and that has always been a detriment,” Sliwkanich said.
Last year St. Albert’s first 15 finished the season 13-1 overall as the pennant winners and playoff champions in the Edmonton Rugby Union (ERU) as well as the provincial gold medalists.
“We had a lot of turnover this year in players. We lost some to injury and we just lost a lot of numbers throughout the season to vacations and other personal commitments. It got tougher as the year went on to have the consistent same people starting so that made our whole season a little bit tough,” Sliwkanich said.
The Lep/Tigers (6-4-1), ranked third out of four teams in premier, scored the first of their 12 tries in the fifth minute and led by 27 at halftime. They also kicked five conversions.
St. Albert’s inability to tackle low, a season-long problem despite the fact the firsts spend more time defending than attacking in every game they played, allowed the Lep/Tigers to run wild.
“They’re a really good team to play against. They’re very skilled and when we play against them we can tell where our skills are. There is no cheap play, no dirty play, plus the refereeing was good today, so it was a really good game to play,” Sliwkanich said. “In St. Albert we have this atmosphere of learning and young enthusiastic players, so coming up to this level even though it was tough it’s still enjoyable to experience playing good rugby.”
St. Albert will close out the season with a playoff date in Calgary against the provincial champion Irish (9-0-1) that’s tentatively scheduled for Saturday. The only premier team in southern Alberta is overflowing with national-calibre players. In league play the Irish pummelled the firsts 116-0 in St. Albert and 80-5 and 109-0 in Calgary.
“We just want to go out and play a good game. We competed against the Irish in one of the three games we played against them quite well so to go out there and have another one of those games where we can compete would be a really good thing for our premier team to leave on a high note. We don’t want to roll over and die and that’s the way we want to end the season,” Sliwkanich said.
Meanwhile, St. Albert’s second division women kick off their shield playoffs tonight against the Strathcona Druids (4-5) at 7 p.m. at Sherwood Park. The last game for St. Albert (1-9) in the three team round-robin draw is Aug. 25 at home against the Lep/Tigers (5-5) at 7 p.m. In league play the top four teams qualified for the playoff cup semifinals and the remaining teams compete in the consolation round.
“In second div we go out there every game having a chance to win, it just depends on where our heads are in that game so in that little three team round robin we have a very good chance of winning some of those games.”
SCRUM BALLS: St. Albert prop Stacie Becker made U20 Canada for this week’s North American Caribbean Association tournament in the Bahamas, but recent knee surgery has sidelined the high school product of the Sturgeon Spirits. She initially hurt the knee last year in England while competing for Canada at the U20 Nations Cup.
