KINGSTON, Ont. (CIS) – The Concordia Stingers suffered a heart-breaking 27-13 loss to the host Queen’s Gaels in CIS women’s rugby semifinal action on Saturday evening.
Concordia will play the RSEQ champion Ottawa Gee-Gees for the bronze medal on Sunday at 1 p.m.
The Stingers were Quebec conference finalists and went into the national tournament as the fifth seed. The Gaels entered the CIS championship as the eighth seed after settling for fourth place in the Ontario playoffs. In an all-OUA gold medal game Sunday at 3 p.m., Queen’s will face the McMaster Marauders.
The game was going according to plan with the Stingers taking an early 5-0 lead on a try from all-Canadian centre Frédérique Rajotte and then disaster struck. Rajotte went down with an ankle injury.
Concordia head coach Graeme McGravie knew it would be tough to overcome.
“We started pretty good, obviously Rajotte was a huge part in the first five minutes scoring a try and then she went down,” he said. “We thought her ankle was broken but it was a severe sprain, but it definitely changed how we approached the game at that point.”
After Rajotte left the game, the Gaels pushed back and received a penalty kick that Lauren McEwen sent through to shrink the Queen’s deficit to two points. The physical play continued with Alex Ste Marie scoring a penalty goal for the Stingers two minutes later.
Queen’s turned the play back around, driving forward and Lizzie Thomson was handed a pass to send her over the line with the first try of the match for the Gaels making the score at 8-8 to end the first half.
It was a race to break the tie in the second stanza, and the Gaels were picking up steam. They scored back-to-back tries. McEwen and Miranda Seifert put the Gaels ahead 22-8.
Before the game was through Concordia made its way to the Queen’s line once more with Erika Ikonomopoulos scoring for the Stingers.
The Gaels shut down any chance of a Concordia comeback with a final try pushed through by rookie Pippi McKay. When time ran out, Queen’s had the 27-13 victory.
All-Canadian Gillian Pegg was selected as player of the game for Queen’s. Saby Dagenais was honoured for Concordia.
