Oban rugby player helps Scotland win Europe Trophy
OBAN rugby player Abi Evans, 21, played for Scotland this summer, and won the Europe women’s sevens rugby cup.
The competition ended in Hungary on July 23, where Abi’s team won a resounding victory in the final match against Germany.
Abi showed promise as an allround athlete early on. When she was 14, she won junior champion for athletics in the Argyll and Bute school’s Highland Games.
The same year, she became junior sport’s woman of the year at Oban and Lorne Sports Festival. This was mainly due to her achievements in swimming - Abi swam for six years at a National Level. But the award also rec- ognised her talents in hockey, netball, athletics and rugby.
Abi took up rugby at Oban High, aged 12. She then went to Strathallan School in Perthshire, where she was already predicted by Richard Fitzsimmons, a head of department, to become an international rugby star. Abi’s focus at school was on swimming, but she continued to play for Oban Lorne Ladies.
At age 17, Abi competed in the UK school games as part of the under-19 rugby sevens. She played her first international rugby match in the 2015 six nations opener against France.
This June, Abi travelled with the Scotland women’s sevens to the Czech Republic.
By the first day, Scotland had scored 128 points without conceding any. It was not until the semi-finals that any team could score against them, when Scotland beat the Ukraine 22-7.
The team’s comfortable victory got them through to the final leg of the competition and the next month they were bound for Hungary. On July 22 Scotland beat Malta, Finland and the Czech Republic, without conceding a single point.
In the knock- out stages the following day, Scotland won against Latvia 50- 0 and Romania 32- 0. Because this substantial victory placed the team in the top two, it automatically qualified them for the Sevens Grand Prix Series next season.
Abi scored two tries in Hungary. In the final match against Germany, Scotland won 33-5.