During the glory days for the Capilano Rugby Club’s premier women’s team, Darcy Patterson was a star player alongside other national-team-level hard hitters like Heather Jaques, Erika Smortchevsky, Beth McNeill and future World Cup silver medallists Mandy Marchak, Hilary Leith and Andrea Burk.
The stacked squad made three consecutive provincial finals from 2008-2010, losing the first two by the narrowest of margins before exploding for a 52-8 win over Coquitlam’s United Rugby to claim the 2010 title in what then-head coach Steve Bennett called a “shellacking.”
Since the shellacking, however, there have been some lean years for the team as a whole as well as for Patterson herself, a former national team member who suffered a string of concussions that forced her off the pitch in her mid-20s.
Unable to play, Patterson did the next best thing, taking over as the coach of the Capilano premier women in 2013. Well, the way she tells it she didn’t have much choice in the matter.
“I’d rather be playing, but coaching is fun,” she said with a laugh. “I kind of just coach because we wouldn’t have had a coach. That’s how I got the role. But since then it’s been really fun.”
The results, however, have not matched the glory years.
“We used to have a pretty good squad but things are kind of dipping off,” she said. “It’d be nice to keep it going.”
That, however, may be changing. Last month the Capilanos travelled south to take on the first-place Seattle Saracens, 5-0 at the time, and handed them their first loss of the season.
“It was pretty cool to beat them on their home turf,” said Patterson of the 31-24 win over Seattle. The win moved Capilano into third place in the league and gave the team a much-needed boost.
“I think it really increased the confidence and morale on the team and gave them a little bit of hope to go for a little bit more throughout the season,” said Patterson. “There’s pretty tight competition (in the league).”
The team lost their next game 33-17 against the Castaway Wanderers on Vancouver Island but bounced back to beat their across-the-bridge rivals from Burnaby Lake Rugby Club 10-5 in a rainy game Saturday at Klahanie Park.
A lot has changed since 2010 but two of the stars remain in Leith and Burk who helped Canada make a surprise run all the way to the final of the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup. The strength of this year’s team is in the forward pack, said Patterson, a group that includes Leith as well as captain Melissa Robinson, Anna Navrot and Nevene Hammoud.
“I would say we have the strongest forward pack in all of B.C., so we play a pretty forward-dominated game,” said Patterson. “When we have everybody there, we’re playing great. We are definitely sticking to our game plan, which is nice, and we’re executing what we need to be doing. … Overall we are playing really well and it’s exciting rugby.”
The team benefits from a steady flow of strong players who graduated from Carson Graham secondary, a list that includes the 28-year-old Patterson who has actually attempted a mini comeback, checking herself in to a couple of recent games.
“There’s a good, solid amount of girls who went to Carson,” she said. “We call ourselves the Carsilanos.”
Patterson is pushing for more new players though and the club has backed her up with free open house sessions aimed at attracting more girls to the sport. The club held a free session before Saturday’s game – which also featured an alumni reunion – and another free Girls Do Rugby session is scheduled for Feb. 27, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at Klahanie Park. The session is open to girls aged 3-17.
The club has a strong mini program for boys but has had trouble attracting enough girls to get youth teams up and running, said Patterson
“(The goal is) to get more girls playing rugby on the North Shore,” she said. “We’re trying to get more interest now so that we can start that in September.”
With that goal in mind the club now has an ally in the International Olympic Committee which has added rugby sevens to the Olympic program. The sport will make its Olympic debut this summer in Rio.
“There’s been a bit more interest from the younger groups since sevens has blossomed and is now an Olympic sport,” said Patterson, who last year was named the head coach of the B.C. Elite Girls Sevens program. “You can definitely tell that there are a lot more athletes that are really into this and they see it as an opportunity to make it to the Olympics.”
Patterson is expecting the excitement to increase next month when Vancouver hosts an HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series event March 12-13 at BC Place. The event, which will feature many of the best sevens teams in the world, has rugby junkies fired up.
“I think it’s pretty exciting because it will bring the sport to a more mainstream level where people can see how awesome it is,” said Patterson. “It’s just such an exciting, dynamic game to watch that you get kind of get sucked in to the whole experience. Then you want to follow it, or play it, or be a part of the community somehow. It’s pretty special that way.”
With that extra excitement spurring them on the Capilano women will be looking to get back to the provincial final this season. They’re still in third place and in good shape to make the provincial semifinals with five games left to play. They’ll be in Surrey this weekend to play Bayside before returning home to host Cowichan Saturday, Feb. 27 starting at 11:30 a.m. at Klahanie Park. The final regular season home game will be played March 19 against Burnaby Lake, also starting at 11:30 a.m. at Klahanie.
Could this be the year that the team makes it all the way back to the top?
“I say we have a shot if we continue playing like we did that game against Seattle,” said Patterson. “I definitely think that we could contend for the premiership.”
