Fleming women’s rugby reign ends, finish outside final four

The gold medal streak ended for the Fleming Knights women’s rugby team on home turf Saturday afternoon.

After back-to-back OCAA championships in 15-a-side rugby the Knights missed out on the medal games in their first year of sevens rugby. The hosts of the 2017 OCAA championships lost two out of three games to finish outside the final four at the Fleming Sports Field Complex.

The Seneca Sting, who beat Fleming 28-12 in semifinal play, upset the unbeaten Humber Hawks 15-0 in the championship game on a cold and blustery day. The Loyalist Lancers beat the Algonquin Thunder 15-10 in the bronze medal match.

Fleming’s day started promising enough with a 17-12 quarter-final win over the Conestoga Condors.

After losing to Seneca, they fell 27-17 to Loyalist in a semifinal for the bronze medal.

Fleming finished with a 12-7 overall record in their first year of sevens.

“It was a pretty big upset for ourselves,” said Kaitlin Newton, who coached Fleming with Shannon Burton. “We definitely thought we’d be in a medal game but it didn’t go our way.”

Newton said the loss to Seneca deflated the team heading into their final match with Loyalist.

“We had just lost against Seneca and that was the game we really wanted,” said Newton. Fleming had split their regular season matches against Seneca winning 5-0 and losing 12-5.

Newton said the switch to sevens was a challenge.

“It was definitely difficult at the start. Shannon and I aren’t sevens players so it was definitely different for us. We had one of our good rugby friends Khalil (Arjam) come in and help us out quite a bit which was great. The girls were slow to start on it but picked it up quite well. We just didn’t have what it took to get to the end result.”

Fleming’s Jacinta AddaiSarfo scored two tries and Alize Spalding-Lawrence one against Conestoga. Cece Evans kicked a convert.

Against Seneca, Erin Shantz and Spalding-Lawrence had tries and Evans a convert. Against Loyalist, Harlynn BeauchampPhillips scored two tries, Spalding-Lawrence one with a convert by Evans.

Loyalist’s bronze medal victory avenged a 22-0 loss to Algonquin in the day’s opening game. Humber edged Algonquin 19-17 in the semifinals. Algonquin defeated Conestoga 15-12 to reach the bronze medal contest.

The girls were slow to start on it but picked it up quite well. We just didn’t have what it took to get to the end result.” Kaitlin Newton