It has been a long journey and history has been made.
The Wilfrid Laurier University Golden Hawks men’s Rugby squad captured their first ever OUA medal winning bronze in a 17-6 victory over crosstown rivals, Waterloo Warriors.
A year after losing to the McMaster Marauders in the bronze medal game, the Hawks managed to pull through and avenge that loss in 2018.
“Our goal was obviously winning a medal. Everybody wants gold but you’ve got to settle for what’s realistic. We had a great game against Queen’s and against Guelph. We thought we should’ve been in the gold medal game but we said, look, it’s all over now. You can’t say let’s be in the gold medal game when you haven’t won so let’s win the bronze and prove something,” Andrew Quattrin, fifth-year hooker, said.
After going down 6-0 after the first half, Quattrin lived out the mantra, “big time players make big time plays in big time moments.”
With 10 minutes left in the game, Quattrin went on to score the game-winning try and then added another one to ice the game with about five minutes left. For his performance, he was also named IG Wealth Management Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Peak Performer for the period ending Nov. 11, 2018.
Having been a part of coach Ian McLeod’s first recruiting class, they have gone from being 3-5 in 2014 and 2015, to 2-6 in 2016, to playing in the bronze medal game two years in a row.
“That game was crazy. We had a pretty emotional film session before that where a couple vets said their final goodbyes and their careers are done. Some of them won’t actually play rugby ever again. That final game with them was dedicated to them, nobody else. Whoever’s ending their careers, that’s their game, so it meant a lot to win that game. It’s for all of us.”
Make no mistake, this stuff isn’t new to Quattrin when it comes to showing out.
A four-time OUA all-star (in his first four years), he was also the 2017 OUA MVP. In addition to that, he’s also Laurier’s first and currently only men’s rugby player to be OUA MVP.
“A lot of it has been my teammates just helping me and just working as a unit. I’ve been the one to get the acknowledgement so I’m grateful for it but without a team, you can’t win anything. They’re probably 80 per cent of all the awards I’ve accomplished. They’re backbones for me,” Quattrin said.
So it was only fair that in his final game as a Golden Hawk and the only year he missed making the OUA all-star team, he made history once more and proved a point as to why his name will be etched in the history books.
Having been a part of coach Ian McLeod’s first recruiting class, they have gone from being 3-5 in 2014 and 2015, to 2-6 in 2016, to playing in the bronze medal game two years in a row.
With the journey coming to a close for Quattrin and his class, it has been quite the ride as he now looks to the opportunities that await him in the sport of rugby with goals of representing Canada on the senior level.
