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May 25, 2010

HIGH SCHOOL RUGBY

With the "Sweet 16" final births allocated now for the BC High School Boys and Girls Rugby, the Cowichan Valley High School have all fared well. It's exciting to see that every high school in the area that has rugby has fielded a team good enough to make it to BC Finals.

Boys BC AA and AAA Finals:
Round #1 at Regional Locations (Brentwood College is one of the regional locals)
Round #2, #3, #4 at Abbotsford's Rotary Park first weekend in June.

BC AA and AAA Finals:
All rounds at Semiahmoo HS and Bayside's Home park (South Surrey Athletic) in White Rock. This weekend.

Upon examining the BC High School Sports website, there are 175 school out of the 270 in the province playing rugby. Out of that 175, the five local schools involved are in the select group of 32 schools represented in the AA and AAA BC Finals on the boys side. Kudos to the respective coaches and managers in the Cowichan School system for keeping rugby in the Cowichan Valley at the highest level possible.

PROVINCIAL BOYS RUGBY REGIONS

Fraser Valley, Surrey, Abbotsford, Langley etc. (8 Schools in 32 team Tournament)
Kootenays, Cranbrook, Nelson, Castlegar etc. (1 Schools in 32 team Tournament)
Lower Mainland, North Vancouver, Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, New West. etc (10 Schools in 32 team Tournament)
Northern Interior Prince George, Williams Lake etc (1 Schools in 32 team Tournament)
North Vancouver Island, Duncan, Nanaimo, Courtenay, PA etc. (6 Schools in 32 team Tournament)
Okanagan, Kelowna, Kamloops, Vernon, Princeton etc. (3 Schools in 32 team Tournament)
South Vancouver Island, Greater Victoria (3 Schools in 32 team Tournament)

Below is the up to date rankings for High School Rugby on the boys side. Each of the 32 teams on the list now advance to the first round of the BC Championships which take place on the last weekend in May. or go to http://www.bcssru.com/ to see the BCHSRA website which is pretty cool.

A source has told me that one of the opening round venues for the boys will be Brentwood College. Tentatively set for Saturday, May 29th, this could be a wonderful opportunity to see some great rugby featuring some of the top prospects in the country. The date and schedule will be confirmed and sent out later this week.

Cowichan High School boys program has really come together this season under Ron Glass and Craig Lauridson. The boys were in a tough AAA North Island League that includes the #1 ranked Shawnigan Lake School and #6 ranked GP Vanier HS out of Courtenay. Despite this, Cow High qualified by winning the games they needed to to advance to the #5 Island Seed AAA qualifier match in Victoria on Thursday against a tough Reynolds High School from Saanich. They took their game on the road and came up with a convincing 22-8 victory over Reynolds sealing their trip to the BC Finals.

The unfortunate detail is that the #5 seed on the Island, where some say the best High School Rugby is played, automatically gets the #16 seed heading into the finals. Despite the better rugby being played here, other regions such as the Kootenays and North Coast top seeds get higher rankings. Of course, in the 1st round #16 will play #1. This will pit two local schools against each other in the first round, Shawnigan Lake vs Cowichan next weekend.

Cowichan HS Girls program under Brad Skene and Alana Skene have come out of league play ranked #1 on the AAA side of the Girl's Tournament. Cowichan's most recent game was a good victory over the #3 ranked Vanier side in the Island Championships last weekend. Good luck to the local ladies over in White Rock this upcoming week!

Ladysmith HS has had a good year to date and have improved over the season and enter the playoffs ranked #4 on the AA side of the tournament. Gord McGeachy and Kyle McDonald under the legacy of the now retired Mike Haley, continue to produce top rugby out of this blue collar school in the North end of the district. Ladysmith HS two Reps playing in Russia for the Canada U-20 squad this week in Casey Cavers and Ty Hamblin (Ty scored a try in Canada's 2 point loss to the Russians today) Ladysmith has some quality players this season as well and should see more rep rugby players being developed out of that program.

I believe the Ladysmith Girls team also made the finals but I wasn't able to confirm.

Shawnigan Lake School boys and girls programs enter their respective tournaments ranked #1 in the Province. The boys have been rather convincing this year under Tim Murdy with big wins (55-0) over Oak Bay. Their only glitch was a tie I believe vs St. Georges out of Vancouver. Shawnigan is the reigning BC Champions from 2009.

Shawnigan Lake School's ladies program under Mark Hall came away with the AA Island Championship last weekend over Brentwood in a narrow 16-15 squeaker. Information on the Girls High School league is difficult to find as they are not in BCHSSA, so don't have a website that one can follow. The last I saw Shawnigan Lake was ranked #1.

Brentwood College Girls program under Steve Cowie, Marius Felix and Jim Burrows are again quite strong and seem to be peaking at the right moment. There last minute 1 point loss to SLS this past week is a vast improvement over their 35 point loss to the same team earlier in the season. Brentwood are the defending AA Champions, are well coached and have some great athletes. The girls are ranked #4 in the Province have great coaching and should do well.

Brentwood College Boys program under Tony Healy and Tony Medina hope to repeat their AA BC Championship season of 2009. This squad is mostly grade 11's, have had some challenges but also great victories over bigger schools this season. (All the High School scores can be seen at http://www.bcssru.com/) They go into the tournament ranked #2 in the Province and will be well tuned to advance.

BOYS PRE TOURNAMENT RANKINGS

AAA
1. Shawnigan Lake
2. Carson Graham (North Vancouver)
3. St. George%u2019s (Vancouver)
4. Oak Bay (Victoria)
5. Earl Marriott (Surrey)
6. G.P. Vanier (Courtenay)
7. Yale (Abbotsford)
8. Argyle (North Vancouver)
9. Robert Bateman (Abbotsford)
10. St. Michaels University (Victoria)
11. Handsworth (North Vancouver)
12. Kelowna
13. Vancouver College
14. W.J. Mouat (Abbotsford)
15. Rick Hansen ((Abbotsford)
16. Cowichan (Duncan)

AA
1. Rockridge (West Vancouver)
2. Brentwood College (Mill Bay)
3. Hugh McRoberts (Richmond)
4. Ladysmith
5. Sentinel (West Vancouver)
6. Aldergrove Community
7. Collingwood (West Vancouver)
8. Southridge (Surrey)
9. Clarence Fulton (Vernon)
10. Heritage Park (Mission)
11. Kelowna Christian
12. Norkam (Kamloops)
13. Sir Charles Tupper (Vancouver)
14. L.V. Rogers (Nelson)
15. Glenlyon Norfolk (Victoria)
16. Smithers