After a disappointing first three weeks of the season, that saw the women’s rugby team winless, the Golden Hawks were hoping to turn around their efforts against York University in their final regular season game last week.
Unfortunately, York, who entered the match undefeated on the year, were too much for Laurier to handle, securing a 78-7 victory.
Despite the lopsided score, Laurier managed to control play for a large portion of the second half and forced York to really dig in to ensure that a win would be had.
“It was probably our best performance [this year],” said head coach Brian Quistberg. “Against a team that is undefeated, we were able to carry the ball and have a lot of possession, so that is areal positive for us.”
“All year, I’ve thought that we have not played as well as we can,” stated Quistberg. “It’s the first game I’ve left and felt not bad. The ride home from York, [even] in a loss, wasn’t too bad.”
The loss means that Laurier will finish the regular season in last place in the OUA Russell Conference, giving the team an unfavourable seeding for the upcoming playoffs.
However, coach Quistberg is not too worried about the team entering the post-season as underdogs, and thinks he knows just how to motivate the team to possibly pull off an upset.
“I’ll get them to reflect on the York game, which sounds weird when you get beat like that, but I’ll get them to focus in on how we carried play [during] that game.”
“We have nothing to lose at this point, so it’s kind of a nice way to go into a game, because there’s no expectations on us,” said Quistberg. “There is always the chance for the upset.”
Despite starting the year with a pre-season win over Western, Laurier has largely been in a development mind frame the rest of the way, with the team’s roster boasting a fair amount of rookies.
“It’s a rebuilding season, the girls all figured that out,” mentioned Quistberg, “When you get a season like this, you just work on little goals and try and take it up a couple steps every week.”
It will be exciting to see how the Golden Hawks can fare in the upcoming playoffs, and see if they can surprise any of their opponents with their underdog status.
Even if they can’t, Laurier appears to be in good position for next season to make serious strides, with a full year of experience under many of their new recruits’ belts.