Scott Radley: The roller-coaster ride that is McMaster women’s rugby

One of the cliches you'll often hear spouted by athletes talks about staying level. Don't get too high or too low. Try to flatten out the thrilling highs and craterous lows.

Nice thought. But how exactly do you do that if you play on the McMaster women's rugby team?

That is a good question," says captain Katie McLeod.

If you've ever seen a graph of a really high-pitched sound wave, you'll have a pretty good idea what their season's been like.

A 34-19 win over Trent University on the Labour Day weekend started things nicely enough. Especially considering what the squad was facing.

It's a young group. Many of the first-year players had only been able to play Grade 9 and Grade 12 rugby in high school because COVID wiped out the years in between. And the coach was only hired on in May. So what did he know about the group and the league?

Almost nothing," Chris Jones laughs.

Fair enough. But a win is a win. Everyone was feeling good.

They were still feeling fine seven days later when the Marauders rolled into Guelph. Home of the defending Ontario champs and a perennial national powerhouse. Where whatever optimism they'd been feeling was quickly wiped away in a rather brutal shellacking.

How brutal? Try 86-5.

Yeah, it stung, McLeod admits. No sense trying to hide the obvious. Jones jokes he'd only experienced something like this once before when an old guy" team he plays on went to the U.S. and faced a side made up of marines and army vets.

The worst part, says Vanessa Vogel, is that as a fifth-year veteran she was expected to put on a happy face and stay upbeat to show confidence and resilience to her younger teammates.

How'd that go?

I don't think I did the best job after that game," she says.

But just when the egos were more bruised than the bodies and things looked bleak, the maroon welcomed Wilfrid Laurier to Ron Joyce Stadium the following week. On alumni day and recruit day, no less. Suddenly the team that had been run out of the stadium a few days before was steamrolling the Golden Hawks, 77-0.

Yes, these are real scores.

Let's maybe keep that system working," Jones thought to himself after this one was done.

Good plan. Because up next was the nation's top-ranked Queen's Gaels. Only the most terrifying rugby squad in the land. It was at this point, Jones did something he'd never done before in close to 30 years of coaching. At practice early in the week, he told his players they were going to lose.

Did he just say that?" Vogel asked herself.

Yup.

Not exactly the motivational speech you hear in a Disney movie. But the outcome was inevitable, Jones continued. So let's work on some facets of our game and find small victories. Like scoring on the previously unblemished Gaels.

That afternoon, the roller-coaster that had been way up and way down and way up went waaaay down. As in 96-3 down.

They did get those three points. That was something. Queen's season-long points-against column was no longer showing a zero. Small mercies. Still, ouch.

This was the outing that finally crushed their spirits and made the rest of the year a giant who cares, right? Nope. These are the parabolic Marauders we're talking about. What goes down must come up. And it did again. The next time out, they crushed York 47-10.

Go ahead, you make sense of it.

Actually, there is some logic to all this. Queen's and Guelph are simply miles ahead of everyone else. Have been for many years.

Meanwhile, Mac's young team has been trying to focus less on the scoreboard than on other metrics that demonstrate improvements within the game. This is a building year. If each game can end with some evidence of betterment, that's a win of a kind.

Of course, the scoreboard is still there. It's impossible not to notice it. Their friends and families and fans certainly do. These wild swings do require some explaining at times.

But it's not done. This Friday it's the regular season finale against a Brock team that's tied with Mac in the standings. The Marauders score more but the Badgers give up fewer points. So what'll happen?

I think it'll be a close game for once," Vogel says. Hopefully, anyway."

Maybe. But don't bet on it.

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com