It was a bit of a turnaround tournament for the Caledonia senior boy’s rugby team, who came home with a bronze finish in the Northern Sevens rugby championships, Oct. 28 -29.
The team, which has adopted the name the ‘Bears,’ travelled to Williams Lake to take part in the sevens tournament.
Rugby sevens is where teams are made up of seven players instead of 15, and matches are shorter.
The first two games were a bit of a challenge for the Bears who, out of nine players, had only three veterans from last season at the tournament.
However, coach Sean Hall said after double losses in a rocky two-game start on day one, the team was able to turn it around on the second day.
The final match for the bronze medal win was a tight match against Prince George’s DP Todd.
The Bears went into the second half down 5-0.
It would be Aedan ‘Cheech’ Monteith who put the team back in the running when, with two minutes left on the clock, he scored a try and sent the teams into overtime.
Hall explained the five minutes of overtime was primarily played in the DP Todd’s side of the field as the Bears took the offensive.
It was Tanner Watt who handed the ball to Ferron Lansdowne who crashed through the opposition’s defence to score a final try and win the match with two seconds remaining.
“It was a nail-biter for sure,” Hall said of the final game.
However, he said the team played awesome, with a definite improvement throughout the weekend.
In total, the Bears are in their second year of what has been a very successful revival of
a sport long-since gone at the high school level in Terrace. This season the Bears will take on teams
from Smithers, Prince Rupert and Houston in a battle for the northwest provincial berth.
