The past, present and future are bonding as one in St. Albert women's rugby.
Wednesday’s 35-31 loss to the LA Crude at St. Albert Rugby Football Club brought together players with the premier and division two teams, fresh faces from the junior ranks and some oldies but goodies from a previous era.
“We’re all St. Albert women players, we all play together and we all help each other,” said Emily Dewitt, a standoff in the division two match against the defending Edmonton Rugby Union champions.
SARFC is 2-1 (158 PF/70 PA) in division two and 2-2 (142 PF/120 PA) in the Alberta premier league with George Harding as the new head coach.
“It’s a really good start to the season for both teams,” said Dewitt, 19, who is double trouble on the pitch with twin sister Kendall, for the premier and division two squads. “George is a great addition to our team. He’s teaching us a lot more structure and just different plays and how we can build upon them.”
Maintaining the ball between the 22-metre lines has been the main focus.
“We have a tactic this year and it feels better to have a structure to follow. We have our leaders on the field who help everybody know when to do our tactics, and it feels like we’re working together more and everybody on the team is being utilized. We’re working as a team and we’re working on each other’s strengths. Nobody is out there just to play rugby by themselves, we’re all out there to play rugby together,” said Dewitt of the “crashing and pushing out” to the middle of the field “where we can put it wide and just get our fast people going so we can get to that next 22.”
Last year in division two SARFC finished 6-6 after losing by 34 points to the host Grande Prairie Sirens in the semifinals.
“I really like how we're forming our div two team this year. We’ve had a lot of players like our alumni come back and play, my auntie (Jill Mitchell) being one of them, so we give them a chance to play in div two which is developmental to build up their skills,” Dewitt said. “We also had a few juniors come out and play their first women’s game today, too.
“It’s really a good way for us to work on our team dynamic and just overall keep learning more together.”
The inaugural premier campaign for SARFC ended with a 2-8-1 record for seventh place out of eight teams.
“In the premier games we didn’t do very well last year and now we’re doing a lot better this year. We’ve won a lot of games already. We’ve had tighter matches. It feels better. We’re more positive. We’re all building each other up," Dewitt said.
Last weekend’s 57-19 loss to the first-place Hornets (5-2, 360 PF/192 PA) completed the four-match series against Calgary premier teams and the remaining five matches are against ERU based clubs, starting Thursday at the Nor’Westers (05, 51 PF/467 PA) at 7 p.m.
SARFC also plays the premier champion Lep/Tigers (5-0, 265 PF/40 PA) as visitors July 28 at 2 p.m.
The last premier victory was 41-24 against the third-place Saracens (4-3, 282 PF/167 PA) June 16 in Calgary.
“It was a really good win. Everything was super positive. Everybody was helping each other,” Dewitt said.
Wednesday's division two tilt featured several momentum shifts in scoring with leads of 15-12 Crude after the first quarter, 19-15 SARFC at halftime and it was 26-25 for the home side after three quarters when the Crude generated two tries six minutes apart. SARFC closed out the scoring with three minutes remaining as Scottish import Katie Dougan planted the ball down past the try line with tenacity to cap off a penalty play following an injury timeout.
Dougan was also yellow carded in the third quarter.
“The score actually really reflected quite well for us even though we’re a developmental team right now. They won (the championship) last year and we only lost by (a few) points to them which is really good for us because it really shows how some of our more senior girls are helping more of the developmental girls on the field. We even had girls in different positions,” said Dewitt, who made it 7-5 SARFC in the sixth minute with a try against the flow and the first of her three conversions.
This year’s wish list for Dewitt is team-oriented.
“Each game we have a magic moment so it’s not necessarily like who shines the most on the field, it’s who did something out of their comfort zone and who really gave it the best heart out there,” said the high school rugby product of the Paul Kane Blues. “My goal for div two is having those newer players feeling more confident where they can do a magic moment or they can feel like they can come out on the rugby field and they made a difference even if it’s not necessarily winning but they did what we taught them and they feel confident.
"As for premier, I would like to make it to playoffs because we didn’t do it last year so that would be big.”
