The provincial honour roll for the Sturgeon Spirits starts with women’s rugby.
Sturgeon finished at the head of the class with top marks at the Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Tier II championship in Calgary.
“It’s pretty awesome to be part of especially a girls’ team that made history for Sturgeon considering we were the only team ever to win a provincial banner for rugby at our school,” said Grade 11 second-row Mackenzie Hamm. "It has a very, very big factor of pride in it.”
In Saturday’s gold-medal match, Sturgeon roared back from a 15-10 deficit in a blaze of glory to defeat the Foothills Falcons of 22-15.
“It was a nail bitter the whole time. You didn’t know who was going to win,” Hamm said. “Our defence definitely won us the game. They were on our try line so much and were literally only feet away from scoring and we held them up multiple, multiple times.”
Last year Foothills handed Sturgeon its only loss in 10 matches, 36-17 in the provincial semifinals.
“We definitely knew we improved from last year so we knew we were going to do better than we did last year. We were at least hoping for a second but a gold is even better,” said Hamm, one of 14 returnees from the 2017 metro Edmonton division two champions and provincial bronze medallists. “We just meshed better as a team this year and we used all of our strengths and all of our players in the right way.”
Sturgeon jumped up into division one this year and in the May 31 final hung tough defensively against the Bev Facey Falcons (5-3) but eventually ran out of time after trailing 22-0 early in the third quarter as Facey prevailed 29-20 for its seventh playoff banner in a row.
The loss was the third of the season and the first since Sturgeon succumbed 49-29 to the Bellerose Bulldogs (6-1) May 17 and the outcome put the Spirits at 2-2 in league play with two matches remaining before the playoffs.
“That's when we really clicked in what we needed to work on and what we needed to improve on and we really nailed those points in our game,” Hamm said of the turnaround. “We started to come out hard right off the beginning and we kept that energy and that momentum that we had right off the start to carry the game. We didn’t let the other team get any leeway.”
After last year’s provincials (“It let us kind of get a feel for the competition and the refereeing style,” Hamm said), Sturgeon rolled past the Hunting Hills Lightning of Red Deer 26-10 and in the semifinals overpowered the F.P. Walshe Flyers of Fort McLeod 35-14 for a shot at the championship.
“Our first two games we were definitely in control the whole game,” Hamm said.
“Every game we got better and finally peaked in the final,” added Stacie Becker, head coach of the 8-3 Spirits. “Our first game we had a great first half and just showcased our great ball running capabilities. In the second game, we played great defence putting pressure on them and we ended up having two key pass interceptions, both resulting in tries.”
The final started with a try by Shelby Pierce, the 2017 Rugby Alberta U16 player of the year.
“That really gave us our momentum for the rest of the game,” said Hamm, who knotted the count at 10 apiece with a try. “We didn’t have as much control as we usually would've liked but we definitely held them defensively.
“We just did everything we usually did and it worked for us.”
Hamm, 16, and Pierce are junior standouts at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club and last year played for the bronze-medal winning U16 Alberta Wolf Pack at the Canadian Rugby Championships.
As the final unfolded, Sturgeon maintained its poise and physicality to pull ahead for good as time wound down.
“We played amazing team defence. It was a very back and forth game. They had some hard hits on us,” said Becker, a Sturgeon and SARFC rugby alumna at prop with international experience. “The final try stood out to me. It was a prop to prop pass with Shelby Pierce crashing it up the side line and out-sprinting their wing for a try,”
Visit www.stalbertgazette.com to view Sturgeon’s provincial championship banner picture.
