Takoda McMullin Announced as 4th Signing for Vancouver Highlanders
Takoda McMullin has been named as the 4th Vancouver Highlanders signing. The outside centre has represented Canada at the U20 level, Canada ‘A’ and long listed for Canada.
Curry Hitchborn: Takoda is a machine. He’s got a 60m boot for goal and is a multi sport athlete who settled on Rugby. I’ve been very fortunate to win quite a few championships with the man. He is absolutely going to make his mark on the sport for a long time to come.
Our current stories first catch up with Takoda at the Red v Black Canada U20 intersquad match in 2021 where he is playing outside centre. That summer he helped the Point Grey rugby league team win the BC Provincial title.
In the fall of 2021 Takoda was playing for UBC in the Coastal Cup and then helped UBC win the Canadian Men’s University Championship, their 3rd title in 4 years.
Starting 2022 it was the BC Premier league and UBC won the title with Takoda starting at outside centre. In May the American Raptors came north to play Canada West, West prevailed 40-17 and Takoda was part of the Canada West team.
In the summer of 2022 it was the Canada U20 tournament in Ontario with Zimbabwe, Chile and Uruguay attending, coaches played Takoda on the wing.
The fall of 2022 saw Canada ‘A’ tour to Brazil for the Americas Trophy tournament, Takoda was listed as one of the centres. Takoda came off the bench in the win over Brazil, replacing 7s player Alex Russell in the centres.
It was back to BC Premier in the fall of 2022 and in December UBC won their 4th University title in 5 years and Takoda was named to the 1st team All Stars at outside centre.
In the spring of 2023 UBC repeated as BC Premier champions and Takodo again started at outside centre scoring a try and adding a penalty kick in the final.
During the summer of 2023 Takoda was named to the national team’s long list for their tour to Tonga. Unfortunately he along with Tyler Rowlands, Reegan O’Gorman were unavailable due to injury.
The fall of 2023 sees Takoda and the UBC team back in the Coastal Cup, the BC Premier and the Canadian University Championship, where UBC claim their 5th title in 6 years. Takoda again is named 1st team All Star at outside centre.
When we go through our archives we see Takoda and his brother Talon representing Earl Marriott high school, they represented the Valley in the Western 7s in 2020. They also represented Canada U18 on their tour to California in 2020. In 2019 the brothers were part of the Canadian Misfits that were in the World School 7s in NZ. In 2018 Takoda was part of the Canada U18 tour to California. In 2018 BC U18 7s coach, Adam Roberts, sent through this assessment, “Talon and Takoda McMullin of Earl Marriott Secondary are impressive with a mix of size and speed, coupled with great game sense.”
The Highlanders now boast 4 Canadian University players, 3 of them Canada U20 players, with 2 coming from UBC. It’s looking quality and we look forward to seeing the future 21 players to be named.