Centre Dufferin girl’s rugby team wins CWOSSA championship

Written By Brian Lockhart

The Centre Dufferin District High School Royals girl's rugby team are Central Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association champions after a 29-0 win over Holy Trinity from Simcoe in the final game on Friday, May 24, on the rugby pitch at CDDHS.

The CWOSSA girls' rugby competition was hosted by CDDHS this year.

The win marks the third consecutive year that CDDHS has won CWOSSA.

The competition started with a round-robin style tournament on Wednesday, May 22.

Centre Dufferin won their first game 39-0 over Kincardine District Secondary School. They followed up with a 24-5 win over Paris District High School in their second game of the day to earn the right to advance to the final.

The Royals had an outstanding year going undefeated in the regular season.

They stormed through the playoffs winning four games before taking a loss to John F. Ross.

“Our regular season went really well,” said Royals captain, Ella Taylor after the CWOSSA win. “We won all of our regular season games. Districts is the only game we lost so far – against Ross, which is a really good team. I think, Brown (Adrian, coach) and our coaches really pushed us to our hardest, and everyone on our team brings some skill to the field.”

Ella said the team worked hard to prepare for CWOSSA and felt confident going into the tournament.

“I think we felt pretty confident,” Ella said. “We had a good practice yesterday. Our run-through went well. We didn't lose many juniors last year so we were confident we had some good players on our team.”

The Royals will now face their biggest challenge when they compete at the provincial level at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) championship and face the best high school teams from around Ontario.

“We have a full week of practice coming up to get ready for OFSAA,” Ella said. “I think we're going to have some tough games. It'll be good. We'll have some good competition and see how it goes.”

The OFSAA A/AA girl's rugby championship will take place from June 3 to 5, in Courtice, Ont.