Collingwood claimed the AAA Gold with a hard fought 22-17 win over Robert Bateman. St. George’s claimed Bronze with a 24-3 win over Shawnigan.
Gold Match Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPskOzf4eqo
Yale claimed a comprehensive victory in the girls XVs final defeating Shawnigan 36-3. The video is below.
It was schools from the Okanagan and the Island taking titles this year. Clarence Fulton from Vernon defeated Quw’utsun from Duncan, 12-10 to win the boys final. Claremont from Saanich won the girls final, defeating Langley 37-0.
Here are the final rankings of the top 8. The scores are on the BCSS results page and their YouTube channel has the videos archived.
Canada did well in pool play going undefeated in four games but lost to USA in the semis and NZ in the 3rd/4th match to finish 4th in the tournament. That result puts them in a 4th/5th place tie with France in the Championship series with only Bordeaux left. USA are in 3rd, NZ 2nd and Australia in top place.
This is Phil’s final newsletter of the year as the Provincials start this week and we’ll cover both the 7s and XVs in separate articles. Phil recaps the Island championship results and presents his 2026 Island All-Star selections.
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BC claimed a 32-7 win in Game #2 for a 68-21 win on aggregate. BC came out strong scoring within the first five minutes and continued to add points throughout the match, Ontario got on the board in the last two minutes. The game notes are below. Showing well for BC were Cody Nhanala, probably the player of the series, Wes Black the surprise of the series (coming from a Div 1 club), Lockie Kratz who controlled both games, the McMullin brothers who are always solid. Brendyn Beck was also a player who deserves some attention from selectors and hopefully he gets invited to a Canada camp. Emerson Prior of course who was a mainstay of a strong BC front row. Don Carson was solid in the second row. Leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Phil’s Volume 2 Issue 10 covers a couple of upsets Collingwood over St. George’s and Claremont over Oak Bay. The Island finals are this week at Shawnigan. I just looked at the SLS Instagram page and they are Island champions, no score given but they defeated Claremont who are Island 2nd. The latest BC School Sports rankings are posted at the end of the article.
It was a good win for BC, the game sometimes felt like a Barbarians style game, neither team had a lot of time together and there wasn’t much cohesion in the backlines. The BC front row got the job done even though pregame it looked like Ontario might dominate this phase of the match with two international props but kudos to Wes Black who held his own against Djustice Sears-Duru and maybe won a bit more. Emerson Prior was up against Matt Tierney and again held his own and maybe won a bit more. Prior was the only prop to go the full 80 minutes. It certainly helped to have the two Carsons in the engine room. Cody Nhanala was probably the player of the match with multiple jackals and scoring the final try of the match. The McMullin brothers put in a good shift, both scoring tries, Talon with his enormous clearance kicks got BC out of trouble on a couple of occasions. Even though the BC backline couldn’t produce much in terms of passing cohesion, the chips kicks and grubbers through the line by Lockie Kratz were devastating and set up 3 of the 5 BC tries. Takoda McMullin’s kick to the corner set up the last try. The series is a composite score format so BC go into Saturday’s game #2 with a +22 advantage.
The photos from the 1st half of the Island Tide vs Ontario Blues are posted below. I had to leave at halftime when Tide were leading 19-7 so was shocked when I got home and saw the final score 47-19 for Ontario. The players in these photos Gradyn Bowd, Brock Gallagher, D’Shawn Bowen, Kyle Tremblay, Owain Rutten, Emerson Prior were instrumental in getting that 1st half lead and didn’t feature in the 2nd half. BC just released their long list for the Ontario matches and all of these players but Gradyn Bowd are on the BC list. Bowd may have picked up an injury in this match, he is not available.
The Canadian women’s XVs team held their west camp the weekend of May 16-17 in Langford. The intrasquad scrimmage took place May 17th prior to the men’s Island v Ontario match. We’ve posted 20 photos below with commentary. We missed some player IDs, feel free to add info via the comment section. One interesting point I noticed was that Christiaan Eisterhuizen was heavily involved in the coaching along with Kevin Rouet. Christiaan has been used in a multi-purpose coaching role with the Pacific Pride, men’s U20, and men’s 7s. With rumours of the Pride not returning will he take on some of the Langford based training of the women’s program?
It was a game of two halves as the first half featured the Tide 1st team vs Blues 2nd team and the second half was the Blues 1st team vs Tide 2nd team. The rosters were 28 players each as Ontario used it as a warm up match for the two game series versus BC. The first half ended 19-7 in the Tide’s favour and when the lineups switched it was 40-0 for Ontario in the 2nd half.