Courtesty of BC Rugby. Abbotsford Senior Secondary lifted their second BC Rugby High School Girls Provincial Sevens title in three years on Saturday, running in five tries to defeat Shawnigan Lake School 33-5 in the Cup Final at UBC. Two other Abbotsford Schools finished in the top 5 with Bateman at 4 and Yale at 5. Robert Bateman was the lone Abbotsford boys’ school in the tournament and finished 3rd. Congratulations to our local teams!
Paced by two tries from speedster Amara Lowrie, Abbotsford defeated Shawnigan, a team they had lost 34-7 to in the pool rounds on Friday. Abbotsford downed Elgin Park 20-7 in the quarterfinals before defeating number one overall seed Robert Bateman 19-5 in the semis.
“Psychologically we had overcome a major hurdle in beating Bateman earlier and that really lifted the team,” said Abbotsford head coach Steph Doan. “The players came out in the final and seized their opportunities. There was some stellar tackling and our defensive alignment was great.”
Shawnigan scored the opening try through speedster Kira Wimbert to take an early 5-0 lead but were unable to produce any more offence.
Lowrie ran in Abbotsford’s first try and Tausani Levale converted and then ran in her own try minutes later for a 12-5 lead. Abbotsford were relentless on their defence and scored their next try through an intercept with Gurpreet Dhaliwal going over for the score. Tausani’s sister Nakisa was next to score a try before Lowrie ran in the fifth and final try. Tausani Levale notched four conversions to round out the 33-7 scoreline.
Abbotsford’s Cup Final performance was nearly a repeat of the 2012 final when they shocked Carson Graham 37-0 at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium.
The consolation final featured top-seeded Bateman who were unable to recover from a slow start, eventually going down 20-7 to GP Vanier. Fraser Valley teams took home several pieces of hardware as Yale were crowned Plate champions after a 26-15 win over Elgin Park for 5th place. Williams Lake outfit Lake City took home the Bowl (9th) with a 22-7 final over Stelly’s. The Shield (13th) went to McMath who downed Elgin Park-2 25-5.
