The Steller Sea Lions Rugby Club, a women’s rugby team in the South Sound, kicked off its inaugural fall 15-on-15 season with a match against the Tacoma Sirens at Portland Avenue Park in Tacoma on Saturday, Sept. 14.
While the Sea Lions lost the match, 12-10, the team celebrated a stellar performance from its 35 players, including 17 rookies who played their first-ever 80-minute match. Head coach Ellie Parrish said she didn’t care that the team lost and instead expressed her pride in the team’s growth. In July, the Sea Lions had 20 players and now boast 31.
“It was awesome seeing 17 rookies out there doing their thing. It can be really intimidating to play an 80-minute game for the first time, and they did really well,” Parrish said. “We had a lot of really good runs and people working together to get the ball down the field.”
The Sea Lions have had a full roster for 7s, but this fall season marked the first time the program has had a roster to run a full practice or match since before the COVID-19 pandemic when it was known as the South Sound Assassins.
“Women’s teams across the country are growing, and it’s incredible because people are finally noticing how cool this game is,” Parrish said. “Being able to see that and being involved in rugby in the South Sound for seven years has been really fulfilling.”
As for the match, the Sea Lions successfully moved the ball down the field with strong runs by captain Sage Pavey, Chelsea Haskey and Toria Loi-On. The difference in the match was the Sea Lions’ failure to touch the ball down into the try zone seven times, and they also missed a conversion kick worth two points.
“I was losing my mind. It’s the, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re so close. We’ve gotta get there,’ and then you make one bad pass that makes the ball bounce and it’s live, and then somebody on the other team who has been around for a while knows that’s the time to pick up the ball and run,” Parrish said. “I think we lost seven tries that way, which is disappointing, but it’s part of learning, and I’m OK with it because we worked really well together. We had more cohesion at the end of the match and we scored a try.”
Pavey said the team’s communication was a strength against the Sirens, whom she described as a physical team that likes to play with contact.
“We were communicating really well with each other. We had a lot of new people, and there’s a lot of new rules, so listening to each other and supporting each other, I think we had really good teamwork and chemistry,” she said. “We kept a positive attitude when things got crazy.”
Pavey said she learned a lot about the team’s potential in the first match, especially from the rookies that make up more than half of the team.
“We have a lot of potential. For a lot of these players playing in their first game, they really stepped up. Attitude is probably one of the biggest things that I think makes a good team because it makes people want to come back, even if it’s frustrating and chaotic. We had fun, and we were there for each other.”
The match against the Sirens was Sea Lions’ first of seven in the fall season. They will next face the Chuckanut Mussels at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, at deWilde Rugby & Polo Fields in Ferndale.
