My Team is My Family!

I have been so lucky to become such good friends with my team mates. My team is my family now and they always will be. This is my last blog for the semester and I wanted to make sure that it was the most important one of them all. I love the Mississauga Blues and everyone on the Senior Women's team.

For the past two years I have been very lucky to make such good friends. I only knew a few people when I started in the club but everyone made me feel so welcome and it just made me enjoy Rugby even more.

This past summer the Senior Women's and Senior Men’s team went out after almost every game on Saturday nights. Doing this made everyone so close; that in the end everyone knew everything about each other. After every practice and game, the Blues club would go out to the Franklin, or another club/bar and we have not only become close as a team, but as a club. I have made the most incredible friends that I know I will have for the rest of my life.

The Blues club have been there supporting one another at each game. The girls would watch the guy’s game and vice versa. We would cheer everyone on, and I know that when I hear people cheering for me it makes me feel so happy that people are enjoying watching me play.

The Senior Women's and Senior Men’s team practice every Tuesdays and Thursdays together and this has brought us really close as a club, sometimes we even practice together; making the girls that much tougher! But the best part of them all is to go out with everyone as much as we can. It’s great to have friends that enjoy and act the same way you do. It makes you want to go to practices because you know that your best friends will be there. I don’t know how many times I would die on the floor laughing, or bump in to each other while passing the ball. Those are the memories that I will have for a life time and that makes me want to play Rugby every year. I love the whole club and most of all my team. I LOVE YOU GIRLS! Even though we don’t see each other much during off season, it’s always the best time when we are together. Mississauga Blues will forever be the same with the love and spirit that everyone has for Rugby.

I LOVE RUGBY!

Rugby has been a part of life for a very long time. Half of my family grew up in England and have been very much involved in this sport. My cousins and sisters all have played Rugby in the past, and that’s when I knew I had to follow their footsteps.

When I was younger I wasn’t the most athletic girl, I always tried out to teams (Volleyball, Basketball, Track and Field, ect.) and I NEVER made them, I always thought I was going to make it and once it came to the cut off sheet, my name was never there, sad but true. So when I found out that Streetsville Secondary School’s Rugby team had no tryouts, I was all game. I knew I was going to play because my older sister was on the team as well; she loves the sport almost as much as I do. However, when I was in grade 9, let me tell you that I was NOT the best player on the team, probably the worst you could say. But, over the years I fell in love with it, it is seriously the best sport in the world, it makes me feel thrilled, ecstatic, hyped up, any excited words you can think of and it makes me feel that I am finally good at something.

There was something about this sport that made me want to do better the next time, I always made that goal for myself to accomplish something by the end of the year. Yes, I have gotten some war wounds over the years (sprained ankle three times, broken nose, most of all bumps, scratches, and bruises) and I have done some damage to other people as well. The worst thing I have ever done to someone was cracked their skull and this was by accident I swear! It was a rainy, slippery, muddy game and I was playing Philip Pocock Secondary school (they were the team to beat) I tried tackling the scrum half and on the way down my chin smashed her head and cracked her skull! To make matters worse was that she has bleach blonde hair (was bright red after that) and I have met her in the past! I found out later that she had to get 7 staples on her head. I felt terrible... but she forgave me and she was actually on my team for the Blues first Senior Women's season. I set a goal for myself to win some sort of an award at the end of each season in High School. I was unsuccessful in grade 9 and 10 (that’s because I was a newbie and still had a lot to learn) so I set a goal to win MIP (Most Improved Player) in grade 11, I tried my hardest and the goal was accomplished! In grade 12, because it was my last year, I set a goal to win MVP (Most Valuable Player) the most important award to be given in my eyes. I worked so hard to get that award and in the end I GOT IT! Best time of my life, I was thrilled. My coach even said, “If someone came up to me 4 years ago and said that this girl was going to win MVP, I would have laughed in her face.” It’s true, I came a long way and all my hard work finally paid off.

When it comes to the Mississauga Blues Rugby club, I had to join. The love for Rugby was defiantly not gone after High School and I still need to play every year. My little sister started High School and she joined the Rugby team, so for her to talk about what she did that day and how well she played in her game; just made myself want to play even more. I am so grateful for the Blues, I never could afford and extracurricular activity so when the opportunity came up I took it in a heartbeat.

Rugby to me is a part of my life and will always be. As long as I am still standing I will be playing Rugby. I am just glad that I have the Blues. The Senior Women's team is like a family to me, it makes it that much easier to enjoy playing the sport I love with the people I love.

Mississauga Blues Sponsors!

When starting a team you have to think about how you are going to get started. What are the jerseys going to look like? How much money will the insurance be? Who will be the “go to” person? And the most important question is; who will be the sponsor for the team?

Mississauga Blues have been really lucky with the wonderful sponsors we have had over the years. They have helped us a lot with buying all the uniforms and program costs (for example, tournaments, field costs, ect.). Our jerseys were labelled like a hockey arena; we have so many different companies/business that are willing to help us. We want to thank every one of them for all their contributions and we appreciate everything they have done for us.

The Senior Women's team have been really lucky for Dominion Lending and Leasing services to sponsor the Women's team. This company is out of Brampton and has helped us out a lot with buying the uniforms and program costs for the Women's team.

Mississauga Blues wants to make sure that we acknowledge these sponsors, companies, and businesses, and let them know how grateful we are for what they have done for us. Last season (2011) the Mississauga Blues Senior Women's team gave Paul Sodhi (who partnerships with Mississauga Blues) and he was proudly amortized with a seasonal jersey and a plaque.

The Franklin Pourhouse also have been willing to let the Mississauga Blues club; dirty, sweaty, and loud, to come and drink and eat at their bar after every game and practice, and we love going there. It is like a taste a home, Mississauga Blues belongs there, and we want to thank them for letting us be ourselves; like true Rugby players do.

Potential Women’s Tour in the Future!

Every athletes dream is to travel the world and play the sport they love playing in the country it originated from. In a previous post I talked about how the Senior Men’s team is going on a tour to England and Wales in the summer of 2012, yes we are all jealous of them, but we hope to have a Senior Women's tour in the near future! (The summer of 2013 to be exact; or we hope)

Like every team that Mississauga Blues has to offer, we are like family and we all have respect for each other, so how much fun would it be to go to a different country with the people you love? I don’t know how to picture anything better, all I know is that I really hope that Mike Curran puts it together and helps us fundraise and organize a potential Women's tour. It is only fair that the Under 18 girls and Senior Men are going; we have to experience what they have well!

Where I would like to go is New Zealand, Ireland, England, or Wales; or maybe all of them, just a tour around the world, WHY NOT!? However, either one would be a great experience. Rugby is so close to my heart and I would love to learn where it originated from, and learn from the people who have played all their lives. First of all, I know that Rugby is huge in these countries and it would just be a blast to party, drink, and play Rugby like the real pros do.

Now all we need to do to make this dream happen is to create awareness, let people know that this is what we want to do, and what we are hoping for in the near future. We need to ask for help, we can’t do this alone and we need your/family/friends help to fundraise and raise money for a Senior Women's tour 2013. I know that this would make me extremely happy as well as the other girls on my team, this is what we have been waiting for... and it is going to happen. I can feel it.

*The picture above was taken by my friend; she backpacked through Europe and this picture was taken in Ireland, and right away she thought of me because she knows how much I love Rugby.

Best Coach - Matt Piemontese

A coach is someone an athlete looks up to, someone that they want to impress, someone that is dedicated, and loves what they do. This is why I think that Matt Piemontese is the best coach that Mississauga Blues has. Now I say this because he is the only coach we have had for the past couple years for the Senior Women’s, and I know that the other coaches that Mississauga Blues has are the best as well, but for my personal experience (and I can speak for the other girls on my team), Matt “Peamont” is the best, most dedicated coach we’ve ever had.

Mississauga Blues practices two times a week and have our games almost every Saturday from June –August, and without a doubt Pe-mon, Pea, Peamont, and Piemontese (so many nicknames I can’t keep up) will always be there. He is the kind of person that you try your hardest to impress. For a Streetsville graduate, I know that I would want to impress Peamont because he is the coach for the Philip Pocock Secondary School girls’Rugby team and when I was in high school they were always the team to beat, they were amazing! When I found out that he was going to be the coach for the Mississauga Blues, I knew that he wouldn’t take any slacking off and he was the person to impress.

Rain or shine, Peamont will be there, practicing with us, doing all the drills with us, showing what to do; instead of telling us what to do. HE IS AMAZING! The best thing I love about Peamont is his voice, NO matter where you are on the field; you can be all the way across the field, you can hear him screaming. He will be shouting down the field, letting you know what to do next, what you are going great, and what you can fix (and yes this is while we are playing). Running back and forth with us, and just being the best coach that any team could have.

Now we have to say good bye, he isn’t moving away or going to a different team (let’s face it, I don’t think that he could stand to lose; because we are the first place team and will always be!) he is now just coaching the Under 18 team, and my team mates and I know that they are in very good hands. We are defiantly going to miss him. Thank you Matt Piemontese! You are the best coach Mississauga Blues Senior Women’s has ever had!!

Streetsville Secondary School = Mississauga Blues

Way back in the day when I was in grade 8 I knew that I was going to play Rugby, my sister that is 2 years older went to Streetsville and she was on the Rugby team, she loved everything about the sport. After that I knew that I was going to be on the Streetsville girls Rugby team. I’ve played on the team from grade 9 to grade 12 and by grade 11 everyone knew how dedicated I was to the sport. Mike Curran asked me to play for Mississauga Blues everyday because he knew how much I enjoyed the sport and how I would excel and be better at the sport that I love playing.

Streetsville is so closely intertwined with Mississauga Blues just because the person that made the team was a teacher at Streetsville Secondary School. Most schools have one sport that everyone loves, that everyone looks forward too, and is willing to wake up early, or stay out late to enjoy the sport that makes their school what it is. Rugby is Streetsville’s sport; everyone counts down the days when Rugby will start, because we know that everyone loves playing.

Mississauga Blues train and play at Streetsville Secondary School, Streetsville’s field is meant for a Rugby game, and it is big enough for Mississauga Blues many different teams to practice on. Streetsville Rugby is the largest highschool program for boys and girls in Ontario, so many students (big and small) join Rugby and love it.

Today, 70% of Mississauga Blues total membership is not tied with Streetsville Secondary School, when Mississauga Blues started 60% of the total membership were people who went to Streetsville Secondary School. Now that our club is getting more awareness, more people from different parts of Mississauga are joining, and this gives our club a variety of different people, with different skills. IT'S GREAT!

Whose Brilliant Idea was it to Start the Club??

I’ll tell you who came up with this wonderful idea, it was Mike Curran; with a few others for support. When I met Curran, right away I knew what the type of guy he was... well I was a student and he was a teacher, but I knew that he was a kind of teacher that was dedicated and fun to be around and I knew there was no doubt that he would be coaching the Streetsville boys Rugby team.

Mike Curran started coaching at Brampton RFC, and there were a bunch of kids from Mississauga high schools with nowhere to play Rugby, and let’s get real here, who doesn’t like to play Rugby.

Over the past few years this club has been growing strong. It started in 2008 with the under 16 team with a little over 100 players, as time grew on, so did the club. It ran from Under 12 year olds, Under 14 year olds, Under 15 year olds, Under 16 year olds (boys), and an Under 17 year olds team (girls). With year six coming around the corner, Mississauga Blues Rugby Club has 300 members with 14 incredible teams ranging from Under 10 year olds Flag Rugby to Senior Men and Women and I am proud to present that we are now one of the largest Rugby club in Ontario.

This is all thanks to Mike Curran; it has been an amazing ride to get new and returning players each year. With the tour coming up, and a new season, Curran is still the dedicated and fun person I met 6 years ago.

Thanks Curran! We appreciate everything you have done for this club.

Women's Play All Over Ontario!

The women’s have been together for two years now, this summer will be our third season and year. And over the past two years we have played all over Ontario and counting, when playing teams that are outside of the GTA it gives us the ability to see how these different cities play Rugby. We have played: Orillia, Georgian Bay, Barrie, Oakville, Toronto, Cobourg, Lindsay, and even our own team, Mississauga.

Each season we played three different teams, three times each. By the end of the season everyone on the opposite team knew their tricks, so it was always a challenge to change our strategy so they wouldn’t clue in.
Our very first game was against Orillia and they beat us bad, this was because we just weren’t ready for our first game because we were new, this however, made Orillia the team to beat, the second time we played them they defiantly were not going to beat us, not this time. We had our head in the game and brutally beat them; they defiantly didn’t see that coming.

It’s hard to play different teams in their home town because there will always be that referee that say that they are not from there, but we all know that they are rooting for the home team to win, and the ref makes so many calls, some appropriate and some are not necessary.

The previous summer Orillia didn’t have enough girls who were able to play during the summer so they didn’t have team, the girls who wanted to play for Orillia, joined Barrie. This would the second year we played this team, by the end of it, it was like we knew each other. Familiar faces made it that much more enjoyable because they knew that our team was good, and it made us more intimidating, which I loved.

This summer of 2012, I hope that we play a couple of the same teams but also play different cities to see what more is out there, and that just adds to the list of the teams we have beat!

Fundraising for the Men’s’ Tour!

Just like every Rugby team, everyone wants to go and experience Rugby in its original habitat, where it originated from, and how the REAL Rugby stars play. Steetsville Secondary School have been traveling to Wales, England, and numerous of other places. Every other year a team from England (one of the places they have traveled) would come to Canada and would live with students from the Streetsville Rugby team and experience our wonderful country and the Streetsville Rugby team would do the same in England. However, this was only the boys’ team; the girls never have had enough people to go on their team to go.

Because Mississauga Blues was made in Streetsville, Mike Curran thought it would be a great idea for the Senior Men’s to go on tour to England and Wales in August 2012, the summer coming up. The past summer all of the men have be rubbing it in our faces that they are going on tour and the women aren’t. However, we are happy for them and hope they have fun, but sooner or later, the women will go, and hopefully it will be sooner than later!
The date is coming close and in order to raise some money for the occasion, the Blues team have come up with some ways to raise money, but have fun while doing it. The fist event was the Fundraising Poker Night; it was a great success, good time and a good party. Although, they didn’t raise as much money as they hoped, they raised a good amount, and any contribution is a great one. They have upcoming events, another poker night on February 21st and a Dinner Dance in early June. We hope that this will help to raise money for jerseys, and air travel.

This isn’t the first time the Blues is doing this, so they do have some experience in the field. The U18 girl’s team went to England and Wales last year in March, they had the best time of their life, and they lived with a bunch of different people while they were site seeing through all the different towns. Now we hope that the men will have as much fun as the girls did!!

There's No TEAM Without the COACH!

With each sport the person who you look up to is your coach, they are the person who teaches you everything you know, and I am happy to say that each and every Blues team have the greatest most experience coaches ever.

Mississauga Blues run 14 apply game experiences, all coaches are certified and we have over 20 wonderful and talented coaches in our club. There are so many coaches in our club that it would take me forever to talk about each one, so for the purpose of this blog I am going to talk about the Senior Men and Senior Women’s coaches from the past couple years.

Mike Curran is the coach for the Men’s team, he is a great coach; I know this from experience because he helped coach the Streetsville Secondary Varsity girls’ team and he helps the Women’s team from time to time. He is very well educated and loves Rugby; he has even played some games on the Men’s team as well! When it comes to a big team with big guys everyone may needs some help, and Blair Jones is perfect for that, he is the team manager for the Men’s team and always there to help (his daughter is on the U18 team) he also loves the game and very dedicated to the sport.

The Senior Women’s team has only been a team for two years now, and we have had the most amazing coach, Matt Piemontese is a great coach, he is there rain or shine and is very dedicated to the sport as well; he even runs the drills with us! “Dedication at its finest,” he is a teacher at Philip Pocock Secondary School and coaches the girls team there as well. However, he is now coaching the Sheridan College Women’s Rugby team and wants to put more time and effort on them this summer, but, he will step in and help the Women’s team once and a while and work with the U18 girls more. We are all very upset that he will no longer be a coach for us, but we know that where ever he coaches, that team will be great! We did come in first place both years you know!

Although, Matt is leaving us; we have two excellent coaches here to help. Keith Wilkinson and Jill Zonneveld are now our new coaches. Keith is a NCCP master learning felicitator and he is also a former National Canadian coach and player! He is very knowledgeable and knows Rugby from head to toe, I’m sure that he will be a great with our team. Jill is formally and IRB Women’s Rugby Counsel, she is a very nice and intelligent lady, but she can also kick some butt! Both she and Keith have been working together and have coached the U16s in the past. Our team is very excited for both of them to help. The season of 2012 will be a great one!

With a great coach there is a great team, we love every one of them!

Exchange Jerseys for Prom Dresses for Breast Cancer!

A typical Rugby uniform is a jersey, shorts, and a mouth guard; so when putting girls who are battered up and dirty in a PROM DRESS makes it that much more fun. For a couple of years Mississauga Blues have been a part of this Prom Dress Rugby game to help raise money for Brest Cancer, it’s easy to raise money when people are dedicated to the sport and common who doesn’t want to watch people dress up in extravagant prom dresses and play Rugby! The Oakville Rugby Crusaders Club or “CRU” had ran this program for a couple years, and in 2009 they invited Mississauga Blues to join then and help organize this wonderful program to help them raise money for a great cause.

In 2009 it was only the under 18 girls who played each other and they raised a couple thousand dollars for the charity, the weather was wonderful and everyone had a great time. In 2010 instead of one game, we had two games which made it more enjoyable. It was no problem at all to ask the under 15 and the senior women to help out and make this event more fun and to raise more money. They sold t-shirts, food, and drinks and ended up raising a whopping $20,000!!!

The summer of 2011 Mississauga Blues and Oakville Crusaders were unable to sponsor the event again due to the scheduling with the men’s and women’s Ontario teams. There are numerous players in the Mississauga Blues club who are also on the Ontario team.

The Breast Cancer Prom Dress Rugby game for summers of 2009 and 2010 was a great success and for an amazing cause, and we hope to have one again in the summer of 2012!

There is a First for Everything!

Now I think that the title speaks for its self when I say that there is a first for everything! The Senior Women’s team places FIRST in their FIRST year as a senior team. It took a while to get a team together; Mike Curran was messaging everyone to join. I’ll be honest it took me a while even though I loved the sport, it was the committing factor that I was unsure of, but when I knew that my little sister was playing Rugby at her school, I just had to join and when I did I never regretted it.

During the season we played four different teams, and each team we played twice. By the championships we won six games and lost two and in the end our enemy was Orillia. They were the first and last team we played against for the 2010 season. Our first game was against them, and they happen to beat us 22-12 (only because we didn’t know what to expect) and when the second time came around we beat them and they didn’t see it coming by a high score of 34-0. By the end of the season, it so happen to be that Orillia was our competition.

The game was so intense I was even unsure of what the outcome was going to be, we all wanted to win and there was no question on loosing. By half time they were winning by a try and a kick and we just had a try. It was all or nothing, and by the end... WE WON! The end score was 14-13 a close game but well earned! Although, we didn’t get any medals; we got something more important our pride. The underdogs came to the top, and we plan on staying there.

Below is an article from the Mississauga News... Check it out!
http://www.mississauga.com/mississauga/article/870427