Maybee, Stewart look to impress at U18 national camp
Kyra Maybee and Lily Stewart will need a break to recover from their March Break.
The Peterborough Pagans and high school rugby standouts have an intense week, and in Maybee’s case more, of rugby ahead.
They have been invited to Rugby Canada’s Under-18 Top 40 Camp in Burnaby, B.C. from March 12 and 18. A team will be selected from the camp for a two game series against the United States later this year at a time and location to be determined.
Maybee, 17, left Tuesday to also participate with Team Ontario in the Canadian U18 Sevens Championship from Thursday to Sunday in Burnaby. This is her second year going to nationals.
“I know it’s going to be a hard camp because I’ll be playing sevens before that and then the next day training again,” Maybee said.
“I know it’s going to be a lot but I know it will be fun. I’m going to try my best to do as well as I can and try to make it. I’m missing a lot of school and it will be a lot of work to catch up but I get to go to Vancouver for 12 days.”
The girls were selected to Canada’s long list last fall and were among 68 athletes to attend a camp in Ottawa. The list was then cut to 40 for the second camp and will be reduced to 24 for the exhibition series against the U.S.
Stewart, 16, a Grade 11 student at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School, has played for Team Ontario the past two years but this is her first experience at a national team camp.
“It’s going to be tough,” Stewart said. “We have five days of training and then a game on the Saturday when we are finished. It’s going to be pretty intense.”
Maybee, a Grade 12 student at Holy Cross Secondary School, started playing rugby with the Hurricanes varsity team in Grade 10. She joined the Pagans that summer and made the provincial team the same year.
She attended a national U18 sevens camp last summer in Toronto. She was named a reserve but did not join the team for its tour of France last fall. She’s determined to make the step up to a national side.
“It’s a big goal of mine,” she said. “I train all year around and it’s something I’d really like to do so I just keep training and trying my best to get to that point.”
She was a soccer player growing up but fell in love with rugby.
“I love the running aspect of it and the tackling. There is a position for everyone in 15s and that’s what I like,” she said.
While the sevens game is much quicker with more open field, Maybee says 15s is more intense physically.
“You’re just as tired playing a sevens game as you are 15s,” she said.
Stewart played one year of Pagans rugby before joining the TASSS team in Grade 9. She helped Ontario win a national gold medal last summer.
The camp last fall was intense, she said, and she wasn’t sure if she did well enough to advance. She was pretty excited to get the invitation.
“I just never felt that was an option for me,” Stewart said. “I’ve gotten some good coaching and help from my coaches at TASSS and with the Pagans. It’s helped me along.”
Stewart said she’d love to represent her country.
“It would be pretty amazing,” she said.
The pair have been teammates on Ontario and Pagans teams.
“Lily is a good friend and I’m glad we get to go out together and represent Peterborough,” Maybee said.