It was a busy week of athletics for SMUS last week, April 14-20. The SMUS Senior Girls Tennis team captured a silver medal at the Independent Schools Athletic Association (ISAA) Tournament in Vancouver last week, while the Senior Girls Soccer team extended their unbeaten string in Lower Island Tier 1 play. Wins for Senior Boys Rugby and the Senior Girls Rugby 7s team capped off a busy week of team sports. This week SMUS will play host to the ISAA Badminton Championships on April 24 and the ISAA Senior Girls Soccer Championships on April 25-26.
Tennis
The SMUS Girls Tennis team defeated Glenlyon Norfolk, Brentwood College, and Shawnigan Lake School to reach the final of the eight-team Independent Schools Athletic Association (ISAA) Tournament this past week at the UBC Tennis Centre in Vancouver.
The Blue Jags then lost to Crofton House in the championship match to take second place overall.
Players on the silver-medal winning SMUS team were Miku Asai, Rina Chida, Lina Cratzius, Amya Naimi, Sonia Naimi, Maddie Tacke, and Caro Vega, with Coaches Dayton Preissl, Chris Freitag, and Joanne Hill.
"The girls team had a phenomenal showing," Preissl said. "Rina Chida had a great performance as our singles player, winning two sets. In the final against Crofton House, the team battled hard and came away with silver medals."
Meanwhile, the SMUS Boys team finished second in its ISAA Tournament pool, defeating GNS and Shawnigan before losing a close 2-1 match to Brentwood – a result that kept the Blue Jags from advancing to the final. Michael Liu of SMUS won all three of his singles sets 6-0, 6-1, 6-0 in a dominant performance.
Senior Girls Soccer
The SMUS Senior Girls Soccer team remained unbeaten on the season thanks to a pair of Lower Island Tier 1 league victories this past week.
The Blue Jags edged the visiting Royal Bay Ravens 1-0 in an intense match last Tuesday. Mackenna Brown scored the game’s lone goal in the first half and SMUS goalkeeper Indigo Edgington helped preserve the win with a strong performance in net.
The Blue Jags followed that up with a 3-1 victory over Reynolds on Thursday at Braefoot Turf. Brown, Kate McQueen, and Avery Geddes scored for SMUS in that win.
SMUS now sits second in the Tier 1 standings with five wins and a tie, two points behind Spectrum, which is at 6-0. The Blue Jags and Thunder will meet in a first-place showdown on Tuesday (April 22) at Layritz Turf beginning at 3 pm.
The Blue Jags will then play host to the ISAA Senior Girls Soccer Tournament all day Friday and Saturday at SMUS. SMUS will face Shawnigan Lake School in its first match at 12:15 pm on Friday before taking on York House at 4:30 pm on the same day.
The Blue Jags will wrap up pool play with a 9 am Saturday game against Mulgrave. The championship match in the ISAA Tournament is scheduled to begin Saturday at 2 pm.
Senior Boys Rugby
The SMUS Senior Boys Rugby team surrendered the first try of the game before roaring back for a convincing 33-15 victory over visiting Brentwood College in Island league play on Wednesday.
Declan Longridge, Quinn McMeekin, Sebastien Allard, Ewan Webber-Smith, and Zaki Pelyhe scored tries for the Blue Jags while Jack Driscoll booted four conversions in the win.
The Senior Boys are looking forward to a good challenge this week as they are scheduled to travel to Vancouver on Wednesday to take on defending BC AA champion Collingwood.
Junior Boys Rugby
The Junior Blue Jags scored the game’s final two tries but couldn’t quite complete the comeback as they fell 24-19 to Brentwood College in the opening game of Wednesday’s rugby doubleheader at SMUS.
Sebastian Ely ran for three tries in the loss while Liam Whiteside had two conversions.
The SMUS Juniors will look to bounce back with a league fixture on Tuesday (April 22) at Claremont, beginning at 3:45 pm.
Senior Girls Rugby 7s
The SMUS Senior Girls Rugby 7s team won its first Lower Island regular season game by a 20-5 score over Belmont under sunny skies on April 14 at Claremont.
Molly Gramada, Sonia Naimi, Nya Tsang, and Lily Ford scored tries for the Blue Jags, who also got huge tackles from Naimi, Kai Ross, and Nicole Li. SMUS Coach Chloe Hill Huse singled out Gramada and Maria Garcia for their organization as well as Valentina Elizalde Olea for her linebreak, with a last-second offload to Tsang scoring under the goal posts.
In its second game of the day, SMUS fell 41-0 to Claremont. Hill Huse said the Jags got excellent on-field leadership and playmaking from Ross, great offloads by Peyton Driscoll, and terrific speed from Carlotta D’Amico in that game.
The Blue Jags will face Claremont and Esquimalt in Lower Island play this coming Friday at Esquimalt, beginning at 3 pm.
Badminton
The SMUS Badminton team ran into some stiff competition in home-and-home Lower Island league matches against Mount Douglas last week, falling to the Rams on both Tuesday and Thursday.
In action last Tuesday at Mount Douglas, both the Boys and the Girls lost 6-1 with some tough matches played overall. The SMUS doubles team of Kyle Shek and Jerry Dang and singles player Memi Sonsophon won their respective matches to earn their teams' only point (both best-of-three matches went to three games). Grade 9 girls Elli Whitehouse and Lisa Pai performed admirably playing up against the seniors of Mount Douglas – winning their first game but ultimately losing the final two games of their match.
The Girls team fared better at SMUS in Thursday’s rematch, losing 5-2 to Mount Douglas. The Girls doubles team of Nicole Meng and Janette Ooi won its matches to earn the team’s two points. The SMUS Boys team fell 7-0 to the visitors.
SMUS Badminton will travel to Claremont for more league matches this Tuesday (April 22) at 3:45 pm. The team will then play host to the ISAA Tournament all day Thursday in both SMUS gyms.
Junior Girls Soccer
The SMUS Junior Girls Soccer team, missing a number of players due to illness and the holiday long weekend, lost 3-0 to visiting Reynolds on Thursday. Anna Beaudry and Serena Wang were standouts for the Junior Jags in that game.
SMUS, 2-2-1 in Lower Island league play this season, takes on Stelly’s in a must-win match this Thursday at Centennial Park, beginning at 3:30 pm. The winner of that game will qualify for the Lower Island semifinals on April 28.
Track and Field
The SMUS Track and Field team attended its third Lower Island league meet of the season last Wednesday, getting strong results from William Low in Junior Boys long jump, Tommy Hong in Senior Boys high jump, Harry Lynch in Senior Boys long jump, Caitlyn Chen in Senior Girls long jump, Josh Hobbs, Parker Sheehan, and Martin Winnett in the 200 metres, and Luc Denux in the Senior Boys 3,000 metres.
The team will compete in the fourth Lower Island league meet this Wednesday.
