Battle for zones

Times Reporter    

 

In their last game of the year on May 21 against Highwood High School, the Strathmore High School Spartans dropped 20-17 at the Calgary Rugby Union. Now, they must play for a spot to advance to zones. 

“From now on, we just have to keep winning,” coach Brad Steele said. The boys battled Chestermere High School on May 29 (result not available at press time) for a spot at zones May 30-31. Chestermere actually finished ahead of the Spartans in the league standings.

“But both of us are on the lower part. Because we have so many teams, we don’t have time to play everyone off,” Steele said.

Four of the eight zone teams will advance – some could be schools the Spartans have never seen. However, Steele isn’t worried.

“What we’ve been practicing is just keeping possession of the ball, just controlling the ball. If we can do that, we’ll be fine,” he said.

Steele will have a healthy lineup for Chestermere, after being down four of his regulars against Highwood. The Spartans even called up a Grade 9 player from Crowther Memorial Junior High School to make sure they were fully covered for the Highwood game.

“We had people playing brand new positions,” Steele said, but didn’t believe that led to the loss. “We still could have won.”

Steele thinks it was more of the team’s errors during the match that set them back, including a try scored against from a kick off. They could have moved on to zones already with that win.

“In my opinion, we won 15 minutes of the game, but you can’t lose 10 minutes – we gave them an easy try. It’s hard to get those back. We had lots of opportunities but just didn’t get through,” Steele said.

Steele and the Spartans lost to Chestermere on May 9 by a score of 14-12.

“They came out hitting hard. They were big and put a lot of pressure on,” he said. “We know what we’re up against, we need to respond earlier. If we don’t give up the ball, there’s no reason why we can’t beat them.”