Cowichan Valley rugby players made up the four top scorers for B.C.’s U18 boys team that won the silver medal at the Canadian Rugby National U18 Sevens Championships last weekend.
Reece Tudor-Jones of Shawnigan Lake led B.C. with 35 points on seven tries over five games, including both scores in the tournament final at BC Place. The next three scoring leaders for B.C. were all from Mill Bay: Siôn Griffiths with 20 points (four tries), Matt McDougall-Percillier with 17 (three tries and one conversion), and Ciaran Breen with 12 (two tries and a conversion).
Tudor-Jones and Breen are students at Shawnigan Lake School, and were joined on the B.C. squad by fellow Shawnigan players Carter Miller, who calls Abbotsford home, and Kyle McCallum, who hails from Hong Kong. Griffiths and McDougall-Percillier both attend Brentwood College School.
Breen, McDougall-Percillier and McCallum are also members of the Cowichan Rugby Football Club.
The first two days of competition — round-robin play last Thursday and playoff matches on Friday — took place at Burnaby Lake, with the top two teams squaring off in the final at BC Place as part of the HSBC Canada Sevens Vancouver Tournament.
In the round robin, B.C. beat Ontario 1 21-19 and Alberta 22-0. The B.C. boys opened the playoff round with a 39-0 quarter-final win over New Brunswick, then won 27-7 over Ontario 2 in the semifinals before falling 29-10 to Ontario 1 in the final. B.C.’s second-place finish was an improvement over last year’s fourth-place result.