The Cowichan Secondary Thunderbirds held a training session with Nanaimo District Secondary School late last month in preparation for the senior boys rugby season, and followed that up with a game against Brentwood College on Tuesday.
The teams took to the pitch at the Cowichan Rugby Football Club for a joint practice last Thursday to help get ready for the season that kicks off this month. The teams each scored three tries.
"It was a very positive learning situation for the schools," Cowichan coach Ron Glass said.
Glass's fellow coach Tom Fogarty was pleased with what he saw in the exhibition.
"We have had great turnouts for our initial training sessions and we are very excited about the potential of this squad," Fogarty said. "With hard work and dedication the boys can definitely do some damage this year, and once again our goal should be to make the provincial tournament and as always have some fun along the way."
Tuesday's match against Brentwood was similar to the session with NDSS as Cowichan split their players into squads with differing levels of experience.
"Our stronger team outplayed them, controlling 98 per cent of the territory, but gave up a late try against the flow of play in injury time," Glass said. "Our least experienced group gave up two tries, and our medium group also gave up a try. Overall Brentwood scored 22 points to our zero. Brentwood only had 18 players, so their team didn't change much; we managed to have 30 different players get valuable playing time."