On May 22, Pontiac High School’s women’s Rugby Sevens team held their second match day of the season hosting games featuring the four other teams in the league from three different schools, including L’École secondaire Sieur de Coulonge (ESSC), D’Arcy McGee and Grande-Rivière.
In their first match of the afternoon, the Panthers took on regional rival ESSC, where they defeated the Carcajous in a 10-0 shutout, extending their record to 2-0 on the season against their cross-Pontiac foe.
Their second game was a hard-fought battle against the D’Arcy McGee Scorpions who flipped the score on the Panthers shutting them down 10-0.
In their third matchup, PHS bounced back with a convincing 20-0 victory over D’Arcy McGee’s B squad bringing lots of smiles to the hometown faithful.
The Panthers’ last draw of the afternoon saw them defeating the Grande-Rivière Cyclones in a back and forth 24-17 dog fight that provided significant action and excitement to the crowd.
For Panthers captain and scrum-half Alexa Larivière ,the best part of the afternoon was eviscerating their local rival ESSC something that’s always a highly awaited battle for players and spectators alike.
“ESSC is normally our biggest competition,” she said. “Running against them is always fun. It brings our school into the community and we love beating them.”
Having played a positive factor in the game herself, delivering a ton of heavily impactful tackles, Larivière was proud of how her teammates battled through the four matchups, touting them for their outstanding efforts in all phases of the game.
“Our scrums were amazing,” she said. “We always won them. Our hooker always did good, Lila Galipeau, she was always kicking the ball back ready for us to run with it. It was perfect. We couldn’t have done anything better to win.”
PHS’ head coach Lizma Wiese was delighted with her team’s performance, crediting her players for kicking things off on the right foot and their constant contributions on both sides of the ball.
“I like that we started off with a bang,” said Wiese. “Our forwards were dominating in the scrums. We had some really, really big tackles by our captain Alexa, also by Camryn [Gibbons] and Grace [Carson] our winger and I think we made an impact on them. It kind of rattled the other team.”
“We had some really good runs,” she added. “Hopefully next time we can capitalize on them by fending the defenders off.”
With so many parents, friends and locals in attendance, Larivière felt like the match day at PHS was a great opportunity for locals to gather in one place to support each other – just what the Pontiac is all about.
“It kind of brings our community more together,” she said. “We have so many people out here right now joining up today for one little school of about 400 students. So, it’s really nice to see all these people here.”
On Sunday, ESSC hosted the league’s third official match day where the Panthers came out with 3 wins and one loss to D’Arcy McGee’s first team, moving their record to 7-4, which solidified their spot in second place in the league’s standings.
At 2-8 on the season, ESSC currently sits in fourth place out of five teams in the league with Grande-Rivière just one game back.
On June 2, PHS, ESSC and the other schools in the league will travel to Hull to compete in the RSEQ Division II regional championship tournament held at Philemon Wright High School.
