Williams Lake rugby player Jake Ilnicki is headed to New Zealand to join the College Rifles Rugby Union Football Club.
The 19-year-old, who plays prop, following his graduation from Williams Lake Secondary School, has spent the past year playing for the University of Victoria Vikings rugby team.
The Rifles, based out of Auckland, NZ. and founded in 1897, have been competing for 113 years and cherish their long-standing tradition.
The team currently competes in the North Island Rugby League.
“It’s going to be a new experience, for sure,” Ilincki said.
“It’s a totally different level [of rugby] and just the chance to go play rugby in a different country is cool.”
In 2009, as a Grade 12 student at WLSS, Ilnicki was a part of Team Canada for a 16-team tournament in Somerset, England. He also represented Team B.C. the previous year in Ottawa at nationals.
Logically, the next step for Ilnicki was to take his game to a higher competitive level, and earning the opportunity to play in New Zealand — where rugby has a national identity — made sense.
The Rifles invited Ilnicki to play for the team while competing at a tournament in Kamloops this past summer.
“I was playing with the [Williams Lake] Rustlers and we were playing their team,” he said. “One of their players who played my position got injured and they asked me to play the game with them.
“After that they invited me to finish their tour of B.C. with them.”
In October Ilnicki got a call from the Rifles organization asking him if he would be interested in playing a season with them in New Zealand.
The team has since lined Ilnicki up with a construction job and a place to stay with a Rifle teammate.
However, he won’t have much time to get acquainted with his new country of residence prior to arriving as the Rifles season begins mid-March.
“They start as soon as I get there,” he said, but added he likely won’t play until he gets in a few practices and learns the team’s systems.”
Ilnicki, who already has a slough of rugby accomplishments under his belt, said he hopes this will be a stepping stone to an eventual pro career in the sport.
“You can’t play pro until you’re 21, but that’s definitely something I’m working towards,” he said.
“If this season pans out I don’t see why I wouldn’t go back and play again.”
He added the support from family and friends in helping him play rugby has been phenomenal.
To give back to the school that helped him reach his goals, Ilnicki, prior to leaving for New Zealand, had been helping the WLSS Stags senior boys at practice in preparation for their upcoming season.
