My time in Victoria

Living in Victoria has been such a cool experience and I am excited to do it all over again this coming fall. Since it was my first ever time in British Columbia, there was tons of stuff to do and see. Besides the rugby portion, I got to sight see and do some cool things with friends.

Finally seeing mountains up close and personal was an experience that not many words can describe. The beaches here on the island were also very nice - I did a polar dip in the first week of January!

Travelling to the mainland for games and to watch the Vancouver 7s was a special treat. Downtown Vancouver reminded me of what it’s like to be in a big city again such as Toronto. And the mountains on the mainland were unlike anything I had seen before.

Starting my rugby journey at the Pride was awesome. Being introduced to a training environment with other athletes with the same common goal as me, really made for some high intensity training. I remember the first week being the toughest - coming off the plane and the only physical exercise I got up to before we started at the Pride was going for walks and doing 1 hike. Safe to say our S&C coach kicked our asses testing our baseline conditioning.

Our first match was against Island rivals UVIC. Unfortunately, due to getting Covid-19 I missed out on this game, but I got to watch on the sidelines as my team came out on top in what was a great introduction to rugby here for me in BC. Then, through hard work during the weeks of training (and a little bit of luck with a player being injured last minute) I managed to find myself in the travelling 23 to the mainland to play Capilano. Though I didn’t get many minutes that game, it was a good experience, and I earned my first Pride cap that day.

Proving myself and showing up every day to training working hard, I got more recognition and earned more minutes in my next game against Westshore. I came on with about 25 minutes left to play and kicked 4/4 conversions to add to our convincing win.

Our next 2 games I earned the starting 10 spot against James Bay and UBC, playing all 80 minutes in both matches. Unfortunately, I broke my hand in the dying minutes of the UBC game, though I still finished. It wasn’t until 15 minutes after I came to my AT worried about my hand hurting and swollen up. The next day I got into a local hospital where I got an x ray and they told me I had broken my 3rd metacarpal in my right hand. 6-8 weeks recovery.

Road to Recovery:

The very next day after my x-ray I was in for surgery (my very first time). Waking up that day I was definitely a little nervous and the waiting lobby at the hospital only made it worse. Luckily, I had a friend with me to help keep me calm. Getting dressed up in the gown and then being told what was going to happen that day was where I started to feel less worried and more relieved like “okay I’m in good hands they know what they are doing”. Coming out of surgery felt like I had just taken a nap for 20 minutes it was crazy!

Weeks 1-4 were pretty tough mentally. All I was allowed to do was remove my splint once every hour to do my hand exercises and at training I was able to just do running/conditioning. The back end of weeks 3 and 4 I started getting back into the gym where I was able to do single arm exercises (on my left side) and lower body movements. During this time, I would say I definitely built up strength in my legs and my conditioning was also getting better.

Weeks 5-6 were a lot more lenient as I was able to take my splint off for 4-5 hours a day and do more exercises to get my grip strength back - luckily for me, getting surgery meant all of this was fast tracked as I was put in a removable splint keeping most of my range of motion. Week 6 I finally got introduced back into rugby - man it felt good to pass the ball again! Unfortunately for me our season had just ended the week prior but there was still work to be done as we still had a few weeks left of training until I would be dismissed back to Ontario.

Next steps:

I arrived home for the summer this week, excited to join the Oshawa Vikings again, and you can anticipate more blog posts from me coming out about U20 Canada camp and the U19 Canadian Rugby Championships!

After my summer rugby is done here in Ontario, I am excited to say I will be joining the Pride again for my second season.