ABBOTSFORD — When you painstakingly nurture something as fragile and intangible as a team’s culture for as long as the good folks at Abbotsford Senior Secondary have done with their girls rugby program, you ultimately achieve a kind of self-sustaining community that is best described as family.
“As a parent of boys, as a sister of three brothers, and as a grandmother of two grandsons, this is a wonderful way to have daughters for a season and that is how we think of our players,” begins Stephanie Doan, 60, who as one of the team’s three co-coaches has not only recognized the ties that bind, but helped join them into a rope that for 22 seasons has been pulling in one direction.
And lately, there has been plenty for the young ladies who don the Panthers’ game kit to dig their heels in about.
Theirs is a program that does not cut players, yet has won three straight B.C. Double A championships and counting in the 15-aside game, a span in which they have lost just one game overall. It is also a program that has won two of the last four B.C. high school sevens titles.
And at the heart of it all is a trio of dedicated coaches who take great pride in the fact that while classic technique and strategy has always been stressed, none of it has come at the expense of being able to pull out the razzle-dazzle when required.
“We have a game that looks like it came from the 1950s because we get those basics down with the girls,” says Matt Myers, who makes up one-third of the coaching co-op along with Doan and veteran guru Peter Cannon. “The girls are so coachable and they have such a good base because we do the basics really well. We really drill it. But we also have flash and flair. We can go with the run-and-gun teams and strike when we feel like it.”
It’s that mix of old and new which best describes the face of the program, one which continues to draw energy from the city’s vibrant club scene and its feeder, Abbotsford Middle School.
While Doan, Myers and Cannon are entrusted with the team’s overall direction, part of its flourish can be attributed its aforementioned self-sustaining community, otherwise known as its alumni.
Doan, in fact, couldn’t help but notice the overall lack of youth within its coaching ranks while looking at a photo of the program’s charter 1994 team.
“It was more of the old-boy, traditional coaches,” she says, “but now there are a lot of young women from the club and provincial programs coaching at this school.”
One of those, 2012 grad Lauren Arthur, a former Panther and captain of Team B.C., is providing the current team with the kind of role model the 2015 roster has no trouble relating to.
It’s all part-and-parcel of a cycle that continues to generate a successful experience.
There’s Abby grad Tiffany Picketts moving on to the Victoria Vikes and just recently being long-listed for the Canadian senior women’s national team.
And there’s the youthful standouts of today, like ultra-talented senior Nakisa Levale, whose younger sister Tausani is also a rising star on the team.
Add Vienna and Natalya Schroeder, and Paige and Trinity Pedersen and you’ve got three sets of sisters on the senior varsity roster.
In the early 2000’s, Doan had to beg players to come out for the team. This year, with the no-cut policy in effect, the roster has swelled to 31.
“Anyone that wants to get out there, attend practice and work on fitness, and has some courage, we want them,” Doan says. “I am absolutely convinced that for at least 95 per cent of the girls that come through Panther rugby, we have made a positive change in their life. Maybe there are teams out their with more B.C. all-stars, and on paper they should maybe beat us. But you know what? Our girls love to play the game.”
