Williams Lake’s Kayla Moleschi and her Canada Women’s Sevens Rugby Teammates captured third place last Thursday at the Dubai Sevens after a thrilling 10-5 win versus France in extra time.
It was Canada’s fourth straight third-place finish at World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series tournament.
Earlier in the day Canada dominated its North American rivals, the U.S., 36-0, in the quarterfinals, however, lost to Australia 29-7 in the semifinals.
“We executed across the board in the quarterfinal and never let a much-improved U.S. into the game,” said Canadian head coach John Tait.
“It was a great response from the entire team after a tough but deserved result losing to England in the last of the pool matches.”
Moleschi contributed a try versus the U.S., and scored one of Canada’s only two scores versus France in its final match, giving Canada a 5-0 lead heading into the second half.
He added the biggest issue he’ll address heading in to the next WRWSS tournament will be consistency and the ability to stay within the game plan.
“We need to become clinical against the top sides and not panic and try to recover a score by forcing play we’re not fully prepared to execute on,” Tai said.
With it being an Olympic-qualifying year the third-place result is a good one for Moleschi and Canada. The top four teams at the end of the season will automatically qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“Every single point is going to count as we move through the series with many of the teams here stepping up their levels of play so getting the extra two points keeps us on target with this season’s goal of being top four and qualified for Rio,” Tait said.
“Winning an event and eventually a series is still on the table and another goal of ours, but we have some work to do to make that happen and we will use this round to further identify what that will require from us to achieve it.”
Next up is the WRWSS in Brazil, running from Feb. 7-8, 2015.