Getting back to the postseason once more

The Wilfrid Laurier University woman’s rugby team played a critical game last Friday against the Brock Badgers.

The club pulled away with the victory by a score of 43-24 and clinched a playoff spot for the second straight year. The Badgers found the lead early, scoring two tries to Laurier’s one to go up 12-5 after the first 20 minutes. However, the Golden Hawks finished the half strong leading 17-12 going into the second.

The second half was very close with the Hawks and the Badgers going try for try making the score 29-24 with 10 minutes left.

The Hawks pulled away in the last 10 minutes, scoring a try to pull ahead 36-24.

In the last minute, forward Jennifer Gilmour had an impressive run of around 50 yards to score her second try of the game and forth conversion for a convincing victory against the Badgers.

Centre Chloe Graves was thrilled with the continued success of the program.

“Last year was our first year [making the playoffs] in a long time so just getting it two years in a row and having two wins this season, as opposed to the one win last season, feels great. We are just building and every year is getting better and better,” she said.

Graves had an extremely strong performance for the Hawks, scoring two tries this game for a season total of five.

Co-head coach Amy Bambury was very pleased with the team’s performance and ability to come back from behind in the victory on Friday night.

“We have been working through adversity for the past few years so the fact that as soon as the girls got scored on they retaliated was big, very big for us in that game,” she said.

Even though the Hawks played a great game, Bambury thinks they still have some work to do.

“We get a little frantic when it’s close. We get too excited and want to do everything all at once and that’s just rugby experience … but we pulled through in the end,” she said.

Going into the next game, Graves said she would like to see more of the same from her teammates

“[We want] that same intensity, that same organization and that same team play. Everyone doing their job and everybody building on what we have done in the past weeks so we can finish our season strong,” she said.

If the Hawks win their next game against the Waterloo Warriors they will have home team advantage for their first playoff game of the season, and will have achieved the best record for twhe woman’s rugby team since 2005.

The Hawks will play in their final game of the 2014-15 regular season is on Oct. 5 at 1 p.m at University Stadium.