THE Collingwood Cavaliers senior boys' rugby team won it all last weekend, claiming the provincial AA championship title in an all-West Van final against their longtime rivals from Rockridge.
The sweet win got Collingwood head coach David Speirs thinking about a time not so long ago when all the Cavaliers could do was lose. Every second year the team goes on tour - rugby tours are common for North Shore high school teams - and this year in March the Cavaliers travelled to Australia where they got beaten. Badly.
"We went 0-6," said Speirs. "It's hard on tour when you're away for three weeks and you don't win any games. Tour fatigue can set in." But in and amongst all that losing, Speirs saw something special happening. Fatigued or not, the players never stopped fighting for every inch.
"These guys, even in those situations, always stepped up and played hard - that gave us an indication that it was a good bunch of kids," he said. "We played really good rugby there but still lost by a few sizeable scores. We just kept saying, 'don't worry about it, you'll be judged by the B.C. championships.'"
The verdict is in now. The Cavaliers showed off that resiliency in claiming their second provincial title in three years, coming through with late-game heroics in both the semifinal and final. No. 2-ranked Collingwood actually appeared to be on their way to the bronze medal game in the late stages of their semifinal against No. 3 St. Michaels University School. Employing a game plan that featured a set of ultrafast runners, SMU ran circles around the Cavaliers for much of the match and held a 24-13 advantage with just 10 minutes left. Needing to change the flow of the game, the Cavs stopped chasing, grabbed the ball and started smashing their way down the field.
"When we did kind of pull it together in the last few minutes we kind of got our hands on the ball and we never let it go," said Speirs. Grade 12 captain Marshall Fuller started the comeback with a try that completed a long possession featuring a lot of hard yards. Taylor Milliken added the convert to make it 24-20. The Cavaliers then appeared on their way to the winning points in the last minute when Connor McRae found some running room and raced toward the goal line but SMU managed to track him down less than a metre from pay dirt. With the lineout going to SMU and the referee checking his watch, the game appeared over.
"We were kind of going, 'uh oh, that might be it,'" said Speirs. "We were just kind of hoping for some kind of miracle off the lineout."
They got it. The miracle man was, not surprisingly, Fuller, who sniffed out the ball when SMU failed to grab it off the lineout and pounced for the winning points.
"It got dropped in the endzone and he dove from about five feet away and got his hand on the ball to get just enough downward pressure for it to be a try," said Speirs. "I'm not sure half our players would have known to just dive and get downward pressure on the ball, which he did. His knowledge of the game is so amazing."
Miracle produced, the Cavaliers were headed to the final. Meanwhile, No. 4-ranked Rockridge needed similar heroics to topple No. 1 Brentwood College to complete the West Van semi sweep.
Kicker Angus Carroll was spot on all game but his three penalty kicks still left the Ravens trailing 12-9 with about two minutes left. Rockridge finally took the lead on a Mitch Mehlenbacher try and the Ravens held on from there, watching as a long, last-ditch kick to win it for Brentwood missed the mark.
"Angus Carroll was having a lights out day - we knew that if we could just keep getting into their half of the field and keep forcing them to take penalties, Angus would keep knocking them over," said Rockridge head coach Perino Zambon, summing up the plan of attack against Brentwood, the defending champs who had also knocked the Ravens out in the semifinals the past two seasons. "That kept us close enough and finally at the end we put a spurt of a few phases together and Mitchell Mehlenbacher went over in the corner to score."
In Saturday's final, played in Abbotsford's Rotary Stadium, Collingwood jumped out to an early 10-0 lead but Rockridge roared back to tie it at 10 early in the second half. With time winding down, however, the Cavaliers once again dug deep into those reserves they stocked way back in March when they were getting their butts kicked in Australia.
"We started getting our hands on the ball and we kept it for phase after phase," said Speirs. Fuller scored his second try of the game to make it 15-10 and then Collingwood went into full smash mode. "We probably kept the ball for 15 or 20 phases, just smashing it up, winning it, smashing it up, winning it. By that time you could see time was running out."
Nick Ludwig capped the match with a long run to make the final 20-10 for Collingwood.
"Huge emotion," Speirs said in describing the scene following the final whistle. "This group of kids, just like Rockridge, they're so invested in the amount of time they put in. Anything other than gold was going to be a huge disappointment. There was the excitement and joy but there were tears of relief too from a lot of the guys."
Fuller, with a pair of tries in both the semifinal and final, was an easy selection as the team's representative on the Commissioner's 15 tournament all-star team.
"He has a knack for the goal line like no one I've ever coached," said Speirs, going on to describe the try that is shown in the photograph that accompanies this article.
"He's diving in, his body position is perfect and the four Rockridge guys are up higher. You can see that he will go through them for sure - that's just that knack for the goal line. He's just got it."
Fuller's game-winning try involved more heady play as he took a No. 8 pickup - roughly equivalent to a quarterback sneak in football - through a mess of bodies into the endzone.
"There was very little room. . . . It was just, 'there's the goal line, I'm going to dive low, it's hard to tackle me, I'm going to reach with the ball and get it down,'" said Speirs. "It was maybe a foot or six inches inside the line, it was that tight, but the referee gave it instantly. He's a physical beast but he's a really smart rugby player too. It's hard to beat that."
The Cavaliers also got their usual stellar play from McRae and Milliken, the other two points of their power trio along with Fuller. Speirs also credited Alex Cheung for playing a great final after missing the previous two games with a concussion, as well as Justin Balogh, an undersized inside centre who was thrust into action when another player was injured.
"Collingwood is a strong, balanced team - they've got three really outstanding players and then the rest of their players are also very good," said Zambon, summing up an opponent he knows very well. The Ravens lost only three matches this season and all of them were to Collingwood. "They're very good at holding onto the ball for long periods of time. They can hold it for 10, 11, 12 phases, and then eventually cracks start to appear. At the high school level if you can hold onto the ball as well as they do, eventually there's going to be a breakdown somewhere and one of their speedy guys is going to get a break and go for a run. . . . If you give the ball up to them, you might not see it again for five minutes."
For the Ravens, scrum half Ryan Lan earned a spot on the Commissioner's 15 team despite playing the entire tournament on two sprained ankles.
"He's a tough little player," said Zambon, adding that it took a lot of tape to get him on the field. "He was basically running around in a pair of ski boots out there. He wasn't his usual self but he still competed and the effort was there despite the fact that he was in obvious pain."
Other standout Ravens on the path to silver included Carroll, fullback Evan Coleman and co-captains Jack Rainer and James Porter. The entire squad fought to the end, even after it became clear they could not catch the Cavaliers, said Zambon.
"Our guys hit that last ruck with the same intensity that they hit the first one," he said. "I couldn't question their effort. They really did put everything into that game, and their season for that matter."
Though there were medals of different colours, both teams agreed the tournament was a big win for West Vancouver rugby. Fierce rivals on the field, many of the players are great friends off it.
"Those often make for the best rivalries just because they are so close - they don't want to have to hear about it on the weekend when they lose," said Zambon with a laugh. "A couple of the (Collingwood) Grade 12 guys walked over and were sitting, chatting with our guys after the game. Some of our parents commented that they've known each other since pre-school. It's a pretty small neighbourhood."
Speirs said he couldn't have asked for a better result or opponent.
"Rockridge has got an amazing team," he said. "We beat them by three points, five points and 10 points (this season). In all cases we had to play at our very best to pull it off. I think the Rockridge-Collingwood rugby rivalry epitomizes the best things about high school sport. It's two programs that are aiming for gold every year and there's a lot of respect between the two programs. . . . Obviously you're hoping that you win on the day but they're quality guys, they get the best out of their kids. It's a great program. When we beat them, it's an honour to do so."
