By Jeff Gard/Today’s Northumberland
It wasn’t the medal they were seeking, but the host St. Mary Thunder will settle for a fourth-place finish and the antique bronze at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) boys A/AA rugby championship.
Saturday capped off six straight days of OFSAA rugby at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in Cobourg with Peterborough’s Adam Scott Collegiate capturing the boys gold medal, defeating Crescent School from Toronto 7-5. Holy Cross from Peterborough had won the girls A/AA provincial high school championship on Wednesday with a victory over St. Mary.
On Saturday, Holy Cross defeated Port Hope’s Trinity College School 21-5 in the boys’ consolation final.
In the bronze medal match-up, Cairine Wilson Secondary scored two tries and had a successful penalty kick in a 17-0 win over St. Mary.
“Lots of great teams out here, lots of solid players,” said St. Mary’s Andrex Kellar. “We obviously didn’t get the result we wanted, but this is still a great result – fourth at OFSAA.”
St. Mary had a great day Thursday to guarantee themselves a shot at a medal on the final day. They tied Streetsville 7-7 before blanking F.E. Madill 38-0, which Kellar said gave the Thunder confidence heading into Friday’s semifinals. A tough Crescent team emerged victorious 17-7 over St. Mary.
“Yesterday was a tough game, they earned that win though and we played our hearts out,” Kellar said. “We had a great game. If we lost, they needed to earn that win. That’s all we wanted.”
Kellar said the team started out with around 20 players, but increased to 30 by the end of the season and he expects a strong group to return next year.
“We bonded as brothers,” he said.
St. Mary team members are: Aiden Crowley, Chase Holmes, Trent Clark, Tom Vandenberg, Liam Flesch, Sebastian Morgan, Andrex Kellar, Jake Traill, Oscar Brown, Ben McNee, Caden Mattson, Sawyer Graves, Connor Gilligan, Sam Carrabin, Noah Richard, Owen Bick, Zane Austin, Dryden McKinley, Nick Heath, Carson Morris, Luca DeCiccio, Jireh Berbana, Hayden Jackson, Nick Widdis, Jeremie Barrie, Logan Eriksson, Austin Ellis, Noah Quemby, Landon Lycett and Pat Hannigan.
It was certainly a rebuilding season following two years without high school boys rugby.
“Senior boys this year is basically junior boys rugby where some kids have played and most haven’t,” said St. Mary coach Greg Conway.
The OFSAA experience will only benefit the Thunder players moving forward.
“It’s a grind,” Conway said. “You have to stay healthy, you’ve got to have a little luck and you’ve got to play well.
“A lot of our damage in that semi and even today was self-inflicted. We were not hitting gaps, we weren’t finding the open guy, which we were doing all season. We had guys trying to take on too much I think and try to control the play themselves, but it’s a team game. If you do that, sometimes it works, but you live and die by it. If it doesn’t work, they steal your ball and they make you pay. The effort was there, we just couldn’t execute.”
Similar to Crescent on Friday, the Thunder ran into a strong defensive team from Cairine Wilson in the bronze medal game Saturday.
“They had just an explosive defence and they made their tackles,” Conway said.
All things considered, it was a successful week for St. Mary hosting the OFSAA tournaments, with games also played at Westwood Park, home of the Cobourg Saxons club program.
“Couldn’t have asked for a better week,” Conway said. “It’s been fantastic. We’ve had nothing but positives from everyone who’s been here.”
