It’s onwards and upwards for the St. Albert Rugby Football Club women, who will be playing in the Edmonton Rugby Union’s highest division after years of being relegated to the second division.
Following a strong performance in the spring-league seeding round, which saw SARFC earn second place amongst nine Edmonton-area teams, the team has earned the right to compete in the first division for the remainder of the season.
Jasmine Fleming, the director of senior rugby with SARFC, said she’s happy the team will be playing in the highest division, as that was the objective when they started the season.
“That was our first goal, and our second goal is to be competitive in first division,” she said.
Based on the season so far, there’s little doubt the women will achieve their second goal as well, having earned a 7-2 record in the spring season and having already defeated one of their first-division competitors and being only narrowly defeated by another.
Following the spring season seeding round, SARFC finished in second place in the nine-team Edmonton division. The top four teams from Edmonton and the top two teams from the five-team Calgary division earn the right to play first division.
Fleming explained when she joined the club in 2010 there were two women’s teams, one in each division, but the numbers dropped off.
“The years after that – 2011, 2012 and 2013 – were pretty rough,” she said. “We just lost a lot of numbers, went down to one team, and we were kind of at the bottom of the division.”
She said it wasn’t necessarily an issue of skill, but rather not having enough numbers. They lost a lot of games by default because they could not field the minimum 12 players, and in other cases were playing shorthanded with fewer than the standard 15 players on their squad.
Things began to turn around in 2014, with two new coaches joining the team – British expatriates Byron Elliott and Ashley Hanson brought a wealth of experience both coaching and playing.
“I think them coming in really showed the girls we were starting to take the program a lot more seriously again,” Fleming said.
While the 2014 season saw the women again relegated to second division, they ended up winning the second-division championships with both the Edmonton Rugby Union and at the provincial level.
The women had a bit of a rest between their last game of the spring season on July 4, in which they crushed the Grande Prairie Sirens 74-10, and the first game of the first-division schedule, which takes place today at 3:45 p.m. in Red Deer against the Calgary Irish.
Fleming said she’s confident the team will be able to stay competitive, in part because many of the players have been working together for several seasons now, but also because this team has the lungs and the legs to keep up the pace for the full 60 minutes.
“Although our forwards are small, what comes with that is they are more fit,” she said. “They have the fitness to last the entire game.”
St. Albert fans will be able to cheer on the home team at SARFC on July 18, July 25 and Aug. 5, then in Edmonton on Aug. 12. Those matches will be followed by the city finals on Aug. 22 and the provincial finals Aug. 29.
