An Okotoks multi-sport athlete is accumulating a bushel full of frequent flyer miles as part of the national team for a future Summer Olympic sport.
Okotokian Jeff Hassler earned his spot on the Canadian roster for its last three International Rugby Board Sevens World Series’ stops of the year: to Wellington, New Zealand and Las Vegas in February and Hong Kong at the end of March. Hassler called his globetrotting experience surreal.
“You play in front of 40,000 fans and everyone is really interested and enjoys being there and watching rugby whereas it’s kind of different in Canada where no one really pays attention to it and it’s more of a secondary sport,” Hassler said. “You almost are considered a celebrity over there, people want to spend time with you and they want to talk to you and it was just a pretty neat experience overall.”
Hassler called Canada’s performance in Hong Kong, in which it booked a spot as a core team for all 10 Sevens World Series’ stops next season, the highlight of his time donning the red and white.
“It was a pretty big tournament for us, if we didn’t qualify top-three in our side of the tournament (then) pretty much the sevens program would fold,” Hassler said. “But if we did (qualify) we’d be considered a core team so we’d get to go to every tournament for years to come.”
Not only did Canada qualify top-three, but it won the qualifier final with a 22-5 victory over Spain on March 25, following playoff wins over Russia and Portugal.
“We go to 10 tournaments now instead of five, so that was pretty much the biggest event for rugby Canada Sevens in the last five to 10 years and I got to be a part of that so that was pretty neat for everyone involved,” Hassler said.
At the previous tournament, Feb. 10-12 in Las Vegas, Canada edged Australia 19-17 to win the bowl final. It was an especially fruitful weekend for Hassler who notched his first two tries, with the breakthrough score coming in a 29-0 win over Uruguay.
“We just did a quick line out and they weren’t set yet,” Hassler said of his try against Uruguay. “The ball went through two guys hands and it was basically just a two-on-one on the outside and I just gassed a guy around the corner and scored under the post with him going around.”
Hassler, who had just three tournaments worth of experience prior to joining the national squad, had his inexperience in sevens manifested itself in his post-try celebration, or lack thereof.
“The last four minutes of the game I got in there and it was quite the experience. I didn’t really know what to do actually,” Hassler said. “All the guys actually made fun of me and had a good laugh because they said I didn’t it look like I knew what I was supposed to do when I was putting the ball down.”
The 20-year-old will soon have opportunities to add to his experience.
“This year was more about becoming a core team so that next year we can compete in the points,” he said. “As far as where we were when we were still competing, we were 10th in the world and knocking off top teams so we were pretty proud of what we did this year.”
Hassler was a star running-back for the HTA Knights and parlayed his performance into a stint as a tailback for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies before ultimately deciding to focus on rugby.
“Last October I kind of had to make the switch from football to rugby if I wanted to get on board with it this year so I had to move from Saskatoon out to Victoria where all the centralization and all the players are,” Hassler said.
“Basically weekend camps and trials and with all the training I was doing throughout the day gave a lot of time for the coaches to see the players and I guess they liked what they saw and made selections from there.”
His transition into sevens didn’t come without its challenges, he said. Rugby sevens, an Olympic Sport starting in 2016, is played on a field with the same dimensions as 15-man rugby, but consists of only two-seven minute halves compared to the 80-minute affairs in rugby. Hassler said the fitness required to excel in sevens is like nothing he has experienced in football and traditional rugby.
“It’s only a 14-minute game which people kind of take for granted, but when you’re out there running as hard as you can for 14 minutes it’s exhausting,” Hassler said. “To get to that level and the conditioning you need to be at, it took some time.”
Hassler knows he’ll have to work to keep his spot on the roster next season.
“I’d like to go on as many of those trips as possible, but now that we’re on 10 (trips) there’s going to be a bigger player pool, but my goal is to be part of that core group of guys that are looked at for the majority of the tournaments.”
With the Canadian rugby sevens team season now over, the versatile Okotokian is switching his focus to the national 15’s team where the 20-year-old is to be carded for the first time.
“In June there are three test matches for Canada that I’m going to be taking part in,” Hassler said. “We play Italy, U.S.A. and Georgia.”
In the meantime, the Okotokian is playing club rugby for the Victoria-based James Bay Athletics Association in the men’s premier league.
