From nail-biter to comfortable triumph.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights extended their unbeaten start to the senior boys high school rugby season with a 31-5 victory over a tough West Island College Wolves team on May 10 at the Calgary Rugby Union.
“They’re a smaller population school, but they’ve got a great rugby program so I’ve been nervous about this game, looking forward to this game just to see what we have as players,” said HTA rugby head coach Jason Krueger.
“I was really proud of the minutes that our guys played, we did make some substitutions, but everybody got into the game and gave some really quality minutes. They threw a lot at us and I think our guys handled that and responded to it very well. I’m very proud of them.”
In what was poised to be a measuring stick for HTA on the heels of a pair of season-opening victories, the Knights and Wolves were neck and neck for most of the first half.
HTA’s Gabriel Marquardt opened the scoring on the Knights’ first sustained phase on offence with the Wolves biting back with a try on their next possession.
“If you make a mistake, you’ve got to get back in the line, get it out of your head,” said Knights second row Wallace Hill. “You’ve just got to find your guy, focus on the next tackle and what you can do to help your teammates.
“Whether that’s going in a ruck or going in and supporting the team and just doing your job and everything will work out.”
A gritty defensive stand from the Knights prevented the Wolves from scoring and with back Matisse Labrenz taking off for a big open field run to get the team out of trouble, the scamper helped set up a score for flanker Ty Stuart. Krueger added another score before half off a midfield scrum to give the Knights a 19-5 advantage at the half.
“You’ve got to have confidence even when you mess up because we had a couple bad balls in the first half that fumbled backwards,” said Xavier Krueger, fly-half for the Knights. “You’ve just got to get out of your head, go to the next play and just play through it.
“You can’t stay on your mistakes or dwell on them, just got to keep playing for the next play.”
In the second half, Krueger and Marquardt would each add their second scores with defence once again leading to offence for the victors.
“Going into the second half it’s a zero-zero game and we just had to start off super intense,” said Knights full-back Jacques Henning. “We received the ball so run it out and get a strong first phase and play the ball out, hits the pods hard and support it with just a clean offence and just dominate.”
The Knights improved to 3-0 from the confidence-boosting battle in the Stampede City.
“They’re really well-coached, have some experienced coaching and they know what they’re doing and take it really seriously there,” Krueger added. “They’re probably one of the only main rugby schools in Calgary.
“This is a good team and it just shows that we’re playing at a high level. We know what calibre rugby we can play at so we’ve got to keep doing that week after week as the games get harder.”
For Hill, a newcomer to the sport, improvement has come from focusing on one element and sharpening that stone day by day.
“I’ve been finding that you just have to go out there and find something that you like to do,” he said. “Tackling, running with the ball, you’ve just got to find it and strive to get better at that every game and that’s all you can do.”
Next up for the Knights is a May 19 double-header on the road versus Calgary’s Rundle College with the boys and girls varsity teams doing battle.
“We have about 10 players who have at least a season of rugby under their belts,” the coach added. “Having said that two-thirds of our team is new and so it has been a lot of learning and seeing what we have.
“One thing I really like about our guys is we are getting better every week, every time we get onto the field whether it’s a game or practice, they’re getting better.”
