The Carson Graham senior girls rugby team is rolling again, having just won their second provincial title in a row with a thrilling 19-17 win over the Yale Lions Saturday in Abbotsford.
Savannah Bauder scored the winning points for Carson Graham on a huge 75-yard run late in the second half to give the Eagles a 19-12 lead. The Lions responded in the last seconds of the match, scoring a try to make the score 19-17, but the conversion – the last kick of the game – went wide left, leaving nothing but the final whistle and an epic celebration for the Eagles.
“Their raw emotion after, you could tell how much it meant to them,” Carson Graham’s Brad Baker, co-coach with Rick Pimlott, said about his team’s well-earned championship celebration. “We’ve experienced championships before but this one seemed to be so gratifying because we had a mixture of experienced and inexperienced girls on the field. … They gelled together as a team with everyone being on an equal playing field, no superstars. Everyone just worked hard together as a team.”
Team captain Lyric Atchison was lined up under the goalposts alongside friend and fellow Grade 12 captain Devan Baker for the game’s final kick.
“We were like, if it goes into overtime, we’ve got this,” said Atchison. “And if not, these are our last 10 seconds as Eagles.”
The win gave the Eagles their 10th championship in the past 13 years, a dominant run that included seven straight wins from 2006-2012. Then came a three-year title drought, no big deal for most other programs but a near eternity for the Eagles, which was snapped when Carson regained championship form last season.
This year’s title run included comfortable wins over South Kamloops and Cowichan in the quarterfinals and semifinals followed by Saturday’s absolute slugfest against Yale.
“Their size was unbelievable,” Brad Baker said of the Lions.” They’re bigger than us, they’re more physical than us.”
“It was a tough game,” added Atchison. “They really held up and so did we, so it was just kind of like people were just getting beat up the whole time.”
Carson Graham got on the board in the first two minutes of the game through a try from Bauder, but Yale fought back to take a 12-5 lead at halftime. Atchison tied the score 12-12 with 10 minutes left to play, finishing a strong team move by crashing over the line. That set the stage for Bauder’s heroic, game-winning romp.
“It was unbelievable,” Baker said of Bauder’s play, which came after Carson Graham stole the ball from Yale deep in their own territory. “She juked a few people and then just ran her heart out. She’s probably the fastest girl on our team, which definitely helped.”
The Grade 10 athlete is known more for her high-level soccer skill than her rugby prowess, but on Saturday Bauder showed she can come up big with the ball in her hands as well.
“Her skill and her speed is over the top,” said Baker. “Not only that, she has the potential to be a great sevens and 15s player.”
Other Grade 12 standouts for the Eagles included Sophie Prem, Georgia Nelson and Erin Spooner, who helped lead the team along with Atchison, who is headed to UBC next season, and Devan Baker who is off to Queen’s University.
“The girls played awesome in the final,” said Baker. “Their work ethic and their desire to play defence against bigger girls and battle bigger girls, more physical girls – we didn’t back down.”
The championship win was the final flight for several Eagles who will be graduating at the end of the year, including Atchison who has been with the senior team since she first took up the sport in Grade 8.
“It’s still kind of weird that I don’t have to go to rugby practice after school,” she said with a laugh. “It’s still kind of hard to believe that I’m not going to be coming back next year. I know I’ll always be an Eagle.”
