ABBOTSFORD — Andrew Kraft could appreciate the surreal nature of the moment.

Two years ago, if you had dared breath aloud the fact that the South Delta Sun Devils could win a B.C. boys high school rugby championship at the second-highest tier of provincial competition, the response would have been a lot louder than mere snickers.

Yet as you watched it all unfold Saturday at Abbotsford’s Rotary Stadium, as Tsawwassen’s finest kept the hometown Robert Bateman Timberwolves at arm’s length for the entire B.C. Triple A Tier 1 title match, you realized just how quickly great coaching and the right collection of physically-gifted and committed players could precipitate a rise.

And anyway you slice it, this has been an epic rise.

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VANCOUVER — If Ethan Lucke had picked another sport to make his specialty, you could quite easily picture him suiting up in any number of different roles.

Perhaps anchoring a defensive backfield in football as a strong safety?

Certainly crouching into the blocks awaiting the starter’s pistol in the 100-metre sprint.

And definitely using that foot speed and anticipation with a glove on his catching hand in centre field.

Alas, football, track and baseball did not end up winning Lucke’s heart.

Rugby did, and on Saturday, as one piece of a total team effort that saw West Vancouver’s Collingwood Cavaliers beat Brentwood College 45-31 for the B.C. Double A Tier 1 provincial title, the easiest way to define how speed set the Cavs apart from the rest of their competition this season was to start with the effort of the team’s Grade 12 back.

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LANGLEY — When you spend your entire high school rugby career growing up in the shadow of Goliath, finally getting a chance to step out into a spotlight of your own can be a little blinding.

“For all these years, Shawnigan Lake has been like a super-hero,” Oak Bay Barbarians’ senior Nick Carson explained on Friday evening. “Just unbeatable. So this means a ton. I knew since the beginning of the season that we could do it. But now that we’re actually here? It’s pretty surreal.”

They’d already beaten the Stags once this season, 20-15 in the Vancouver Island Quad-A final.

Yet taking down the single most reliable program in all of B.C. high school sports in the provincial championship game environment they have come to call their very own by winning it all in eight of the previous nine seasons?

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