LCI looks to build off of championship season

By Lethbridge Herald on April 2, 2025.

Herald photo by JUSTIN SEWARD LCIÕs Sarah Broad attempts to break tackles from Matthew Halton High School defenders during varsity girls rugby action at the Lethbridge Rugby Club on Wednesday. LCI opened their season with a 72-0 win.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

LCI’s varsity girls rugby team kicked off a new season this week with a primary focus of building off of last year’s provincial win.

“It definitely changes the tone,” said Samantha Wiersma, LCI head coach.

“I’d say they have a quiet confidence behind them, that they’ve done it before and so hopefully they can just do it again.”

Wiersma is hoping for the championship mindset to not just come from the coaches.

“We’ve got a really solid group of leaders,” said Wiersma.

“We have some Grade 12s that have been playing senior since Grade 10, which is pretty rare to have a solid group of them. So I’m kind of hoping it can come internally. The girls that have been there before, they know what it takes and they can hopefully just bring these new girls under their wing and do the same thing we did last year.”

LCI wants to take the approach of taking it a game at a time.

“We try and set sort of weekly goals and have score goals in mind for each game because we can’t think about a provincial championship at every single game, it’ll get ahead of us,” said Wiersma.

Wiersma answer was simple when asked about having a target on their back this year.

“Probably,” said Wiersma.

“Now every team is sort of gunning for us, and they’ve heard of us now and we can’t really sneak in and hope that they’re not gonna notice that we’re there.”

The team will look to their strong offence for success.

“I’m not worried about putting up points, it’s a really, really strong offensive team,” said Wiersma.

“Our forwards are gonna be a little bit more of a mix of new and old. So offensively, I think we’re absolutely solid and then I’m super excited to see how they play.”

Madison Kutsch is riding the high of a provincial championship with the volleyball team and a fourth-place finish with the school’s varsity basketball team at provincials this year and she  talked about how she can help with that championship mindset with the rugby team with those experiences.

“I feel like just helping our team stay focused on what’s important and working together as a team,” said Kutsch.

Kutsch feels the team is tight and are all close friends.

“I feel that definitely …helps us work together really well as a team and so we all just know what’s going on and we help each other when we need it,” said Kutsch.