You never know until you try.
With humble beginnings in the sport, Foothills Lions Carmen Izyk and Keyara Wardley have blossomed in a few short years all the way to earning two of the 12 spots on Team Canada’s entry in women’s rugby sevens at the Youth Commonwealth Games this summer in the Bahamas.
“I started in Grade 9 in high school then joined the Lions and it took off from there,” said Izyk, a Grade 11 student at Highwood High School from Blackie. “When I first started I can remember people telling me you’re just going to break like a twig, why are you playing rugby?’ That gave a little fuel to my fire to say ‘no, I’m going to play.’
“I definitely was not expecting anything like this. It was for fun because I did lots of sports and thought I will try something new.”
Wardley, a Grade 12 student at Country Central High School in Vulcan, saw a similar trajectory with rugby originally serving as something of an off-season activity.
“I started in Grade 7 and we only had fifteens (rugby) in Vulcan,” she said. “I hated rugby, I didn’t want to do it, but it was my off-season from volleyball so I wanted to do something to keep me active.
“I kept on going with it and by the start of the Grade 11 year I thought ‘oh my god I love rugby’ and want to see how far I can go with it.”
The Lions duo are the only Albertans on the Canadian roster.
Canada earned the silver at the 2015 Games in Samoa and feature four returning players from its bronze medal winning entry at the 2016 U18 European Championships.
“I’m extremely humbled and honoured to be able to go there and represent my country,” Izyk said. “I definitely want to represent my country the best way possible so there will be a lot of training involved before I go.
“It’s an amazing opportunity and I’m hoping to get a lot out of it and learn a lot.”
Head coach Sandro Fiorino named his roster based largely on the players’ performances at the U18 Canada Sevens Championships in Vancouver in March.
Wardley and Izyk were long-listed following the event.
“I’m sure (Fiorino) looked back on some of the videos from nationals in Vancouver and selected from there,” Izyk said. “Also talking to other people, my coach Jim Ryan from the Lions was in contact with him and he said he was saying good things about me.”
The Lions teammates will be training together during the weeks leading up to the event, held July 19-21 in Nassau, Bahamas.
“It’s so surreal being as young as we are and being able to represent our country,” Wardley said. “As soon as we get there it’s definitely going to be an eye-opener and I think both us are ready for it.
“We know we’re representing our country, but have to have that mindset of we’ve already done this before, we know what we have to do and basing it off that.”
Wardley is also set for another adventure and one that promises to last much longer.
The Grade 12 student earned her way onto the Canada women’s sevens rugby program and is set to move out to the team’s home base in Langford, B.C. later this summer.
“I was out there last year for some training and that was my first experience with the sevens program,” she said. “From that one week I just fell in love with sevens and base my skills off what I needed to work on to get better to make it to the next level. They’ve seen that and like what they saw.”
For more information go to rugbycanada.ca
