Raymond Comets vying for 11th Provincials rugby banner in Edmonton

By Lethbridge Herald on June 2, 2022.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Raymond  High School Comets Tier 1 girls rugby team is the top-ranked team heading into provincials in Edmonton today and tomorrow, and hope to take home their 11 provincial banner in 12 years.

“Just be ready for whatever we face,” said Comets head coach Dan Bikman.

“Every provincial tournament we’ve coached in just brings a different form of challenges or adversity. So we just try to prepare the kids for the different options that you see at a championship tournament because they’re a little bit different. There’s more intensity — all teams are there, having won a Zone or city championship. So we try to mentally and physically prepare for all that.”

Bikman said the team has played a lot of games and have been to a tournament in Edmonton and a tournament in Red Deer.

“We’ve had a lot of success, so that always breeds confidence,” he said.

“We’ve worked through some injuries and I feel like they’re peaking at the right time. But the practices in the last week-and-a-half have been really good. So, the travel and then the hard work in practice puts them in a good position.”

The Comets went through the regular season undefeated and were scored on once.

Raymond will open up against Western Canada in a single knock-out game at noon today.

The Winston Churchill High School Tier 2 girls rugby team will be looking to ride the high of a 61-10 win in Monday’s Zone championship game into their provincial game against Red Deer’s Notre Dame.

“We’ve always known our goal is to go to provincials,” said head coach Shannon Court.

“So basically we just kind of played that whole way throughout the season. It’s  just with our mind on that gold medal final match in provincials and this week we kind of focused on letting our bodies rest because it’s a lot of rugby in one week for high school girls. We still practiced but more the mental aspect.”

Court has been with the rugby program for 10 years and the team has won four provincials in the last five years.

 Winston Churchill’s boys team will fast track to the gold medal game against Sturgeon Composite  High School tonight at 4 p.m. after three teams dropped out.

“I think when it comes to provincials, you need a fast start anyway ,” said coach Neven Morrison.

“… I think you need to have that same mind set coming in to one game. Like there’s no time to get behind or anything like that. You really want to come out of the gates flying and make sure that you kind of let this other team we haven’t played before know we mean business.”

LCI Tier 1 girls, W.R. Myers Tier 3 girls and Chinook Tier 1 boys will also be Edmonton.

As for other ASAA provincial championships, LCI and Chinook will have track and field competitors in Medicine Hat today and tomorrow.