The International School of Port-of-Spain pulled off a major upset at Saturday's final of the Girls' Under-17 division of the Digicel Secondary School Rugby League, beating Bishops Anstey High School 12-0.
ISPS was a team of debutants, but fans could not tell based on the thrashing the rugger-girls placed on Bishops, making easy work of their defence at the game played at St Mary's College Ground, Serpentine Road, St Clair.
The ISPS girls' victory was being viewed by many in that camp as retribution for the boys' team, in a similar age group, which entered this year's competition as the defending champion, but was, knocked out during the semifinal round.
But the ISPS girls were not the only school with changing fortunes on the day.Competition in the Boys U-17 saw Belmont Boys Secondary School end its reported 20-year dry-spell to clinch victory 12-5 against Fatima College.
Judging from the results at the end of the U-14 game this was not Fatima College's season. They were beaten by St Mary's College 26-7. Fatima got the better of CIC during the last three seasons.
Interviewed, Junior Arismandez, head coach at (ISPS) said the results did not come as a surprise to the technical team, even though this was the girls' maiden outing in the tournament.
"We worked hard. The girls are very green. They don't know anything about rugby. So, we had to be drilling them like three times a week and expose them to the boys. I also coach the boy's team. They played against the boys which would have made their competitive spirit a lot better. They came in for the fun of it. I took them away from volleyball. They didn't sign up for rugby. They signed up for volleyball. I asked them if they were interested because I gave the association the assurance that I was going to field a team," he said.
Arismandez explained, "Most of these girls are into basketball, too. It was a lot easier for me to deal with the girls because they have good co-ordination, their enthusiasm is very high and their discipline is excellent. I am using this as a stepping stone for the boys so that they could raise their level of the game. They are just as new. The boys that graduated were the core, so now I have new boys, but the girls were a lot easier to train. The adapted quicker and their response was 75 per cent better than the boys."
Justin Charlerie, head coach at St Mary's College said it was not just that the U-14 team, won, but more importantly how, it won. In recapping the performance he made it clear the athletes delivered as expected and even though the score line at the end was 27-7 his defence did not falter.
"It was hard work by the boys. It could be attested throughout the year, as we didn't lose a game, as they boys came out every Tuesday and Thursday to training and they put in the work. It was difficult to keep up the momentum. We had two coaches and 30 plus boys, because we had U-14 and U-17 training sessions. But it was the hard work of the boys and the persistence in the training sessions and the willingness to learn," he said.