Canadian ‘cannonball’ sparks rugby sweep
It can be tough to play the home team — on the first day of the Olympics, in a brand new sport, no less — but the Canadian rugby sevens squad still crushed the Brazilian women.
That’s figuratively, by a 38-0 score, and literally, since this is a contact sport.
The booing that followed Karen Paquin’s try just 30 seconds after the opening whistle put the Canadians off their game long enough for a Brazilian attacker to get through their forward line. Then she was met with the brick wall that is Ashley Steacy. And from then on, but for a few minor hiccups, it was all Canada all the time.
“It felt really nice to get a good shoulder-on-hit, (my) first big tackle back (from injuries). It felt great,” she said right after their evening win. Saturday’s games — Canada trounced Japan earlier, 45-0 — were the first ones that Steacy has played all season after suffering not one but two knee injuries within the last 10 months.
“Ashley Steacy, oh my god, she’s such a cannonball,” team captain Jen Kish said. “She’s the heart of our defence and it’s good to have her back ... She’s got X-factor, and you can expect that she’s going to start building in this tournament and she’ll be one to watch.”
Steacy may only be five-foot-two, but not much can stand in her way — on or off the rugby pitch.
“People are always saying ‘you’re so short, can you even play this sport’ but ... you use what you have and I hit them with everything I have,” she said recently, with a big smile.
Punishing tackles — one of the many strengths of her play — are actually what made Steacy leery about trying the sport initially. She only started playing in her Lethbridge, Alta., high school because her best friend really wanted her to, but after her first game, where she scored four tries, she was hooked.
She was 15 then. Now she’s 28 and rugby has defined her entire adult life.
And for the last five years in particular, she has been working toward this Olympic moment, which is what made her knee injury in October and another in February so crushing.
“It literally means the world (to be here) ... I’m so grateful.”
As well as the intensive rehab she went through, trusting that all her work would pay off in time to make the Rio team, chasing this Olympic dream has meant living apart from her husband, Sean, for the last 2 1/2 years.
In 2012, the Canadian rugby sevens program was centralized in Langford, B.C., to better prepare for the Olympic debut of the sport. “Okay, five months. Go do your thing. I support you,” he told her.
In 2013, it was six months: “Go on, honey. Go follow your dream.”
From 2014 until now, the women have lived and trained year-round in Langford. “We get summers and Christmas,” Steacy said of her husband, a manager at the local airport and gunsmith. “Thank goodness for FaceTime.”
He’s here at Deodoro Stadium to watch, and later in the Games they both plan to see his sister, hammer thrower Heather Steacy, compete in her second Olympics.
Steacy hopes to be wearing her own Olympic medal by then. But she and her teammates, ranked third in the world, don’t just want to win here. They want Canadians to fall in love with them and their sport, just as many did with the women’s soccer team at the London Olympics.
They don’t have much time to make that happen. Not only is it a fast game, just 14 minutes long (20 in the final), it’s only a three-day tournament with the women’s medal rounds played Monday.
But dramatic moments — like Britt Benn’s try against Japan, in which she ran 90 metres (practically the entire length of the field) and even slowed down at the end a la Usain Bolt — should help.
They face Britain next on Sunday (11:30 a.m. Eastern time). It’s the toughest team in their pool, but with two wins already the Canadians are certain to advance to the quarterfinals.