It’s championship week in Rugby Idaho, and the DI girls’ high school title is coming down to Mountain View and Eagle. The Mavericks and Mustangs both hail from the West Ada school district and thus played each other, closely, all fall 7s season. A bit of a rivalry has formed, especially with the condensed 15s season, and it’s the game that many onlookers have been expecting all spring.
For Eagle, however, the berth to the final is a culmination of a deliberate, culture-focused process that has taken years to come to fruition. Current head coach Kraig Smikel joined in spring 2018, three years after the program had been established, and began his career with the Mustangs in the forwards.
“From my understanding, there were some bad cultural issues within the team and morale was low,” Smikel recalled the state of the team when he arrived. “I was brought on as an assistant coach, and with the new head coach, we focused on teaching basics and building good fundamentals.”
The approach landed with the team and it advanced to the 15s final, losing to Capital in the championship. But there was good momentum, and it flowed into the first West Ada School District 7s competition that fall. The league, which is organized by Rugby Idaho, involved single-school varsity teams, and Eagle performed well that first year, taking the top seed into the championship tournament.
“That is where we learned that you have to have a good team culture and play team rugby to win those types of tournaments,” Smikel said of a turning point. “It was eye-opening for me and the head coach at the time. We had to sit down and figure out how to change the attitude of the team.”
A team mantra emerged from the brainstorming – One heart, one family, fight to win. That sentiment encouraged more team-affiliated activities, so that players could form stronger bonds away from the pitch. The coaching staff also invested in the off-season, launching a strength-and-conditioning program and hiring a coach to run it.
Smikel has now been with Eagle for four years, taking over as head coach in spring 2019. There are two players – Karissa Newell and Kloe Williams – who started their high school rugby careers when Smikel first joined the Mustangs, and they’re graduating seniors.
“They’ve been through everything with me,” Smikel said. “They came in as freshmen and saw immediate success, and then saw the ebbs and flows that come with building a team culture. Now the team is a tight-knit group that works together, and they’ve been a big part of that progress.”
Newell is quick and started her career on the wing, but the coaching staff has moved her all over the back line, and she’s always been amenable, and successful. Now she’s playing fullback and having a great season.
“I also coached football and she’s one of the best open-field tacklers I’ve coached,” Smikel said of the future Boise State University student. “She’s also one of the smartest humans I’ve known, period. Just understands things well. She’s positive, one of hardest workers on the field, and she’s open and honest with her communication with players. She’s big on accountability, for herself and teammates.”
Williams also joined as a freshman in spring 2018 and will continue her rugby career at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Like Newell, she has played several positions, all in the pack.
“Kloe is just a work horse,” Smikel said. “If you ask her, she’ll say, ‘I might not be the best athlete but I’ll probably out-work you.’ She’s got that type of mentality, and that’s what you need in a leader, in everything. She’s taken leadership to another level, where she values accountability, values hard work, and she puts that on her teammates.”
The duo have perspective on the Eagle program beyond this successful season, and they’re invested in team’s continued growth into the future.
“And that’s a big reason why Williams was chosen as captain, for her goals for the future,” Smikel said. “This year was different: We had captain interviews. Players who were interested in becoming captain had to fill out an application. We interviewed them and ran them through a gambit of questions and weighed that against what we saw in their practices and matches and offseason work.”
The coaches were really pleased with the experiment and were pleasantly surprised with the response of the four applicants and the team as a whole.
“We’ll stick with this selection strategy because, one, it helps the coaches make a much more informed decision about who we want as captain and to lead the team,” Smikel said. “We spend a lot of time with the players, but these conversations gave us a lot more information on certain things that we wouldn’t know otherwise. It was great insight, and it also helped the coaches establish exactly what we wanted for the program.
“And second, from a player’s perspective, we’re really teaching them a skill for later on in their lives,” the coach continued. “The application process, preparing for an interview – they were not simple interview questions – presentation skills, dressing professionally – it’s part of a message: If you want something in life, this is one thing you’ll have to go through.”
In spring 2020, the high school season was cut short due to Covid-19. But unlike the rest of the country, the West Ada 7s league was able to contest its fall 2020 season. Eagle worked approximately 25 players through varsity and JV sides, and finished third overall. Those numbers held for the club 15s season this spring.
The competition is different this year, as the pandemic has impacted teams in different regions differently. Division I is smaller, with just four teams able to run 15s squads consistently, and Division II is larger, allowing for flexibility on game day. In a normal season, Eagle would play four DI games and two DII games, which would be used to work the depth. Instead, the four DI teams – all of which are from West Ada – were scheduled to play each other twice during the regular season.
“This season has been a bit of a grinder because every match has been very competitive,” Smikel said. “You couldn’t just walk in and think, ‘This is the day where we can work in players who normally don’t see much time or need more reps.’ You had to prepare and play as hard as you could with no expectations for the outcome. If you look at the numbers, with maybe a couple of outliers, all of the matches were really close or decided in the final 10 minutes of the game.”
Eagle went 3-3 in the regular season, defeating Meridian by a combined 67-44, splitting with Rocky Mountain 26-36, and dropping both games to Mountain View 29-48.
“The players have enjoyed it to a certain degree, especially playing teams twice, which normally doesn’t happen,” Kraig said of the competition format. “Especially for us, since we don’t have a perfect record, we could take another shot at a team. Rivalries also started to form because it was the same teams from the fall. Everyone gets a little more competitive because we know what to expect or what we need to plan for. This has been such a hard season, but the girls appreciate it because you’re respected even more when you beat tough competition to get [to the final]. You earned your right to be here.”
Eagle was learning a lot about itself during an intense season, but there were more lessons to come in the Mustangs’ semifinal against Rocky Mountain on May 7.
“We started a little … I don’t want to say, ‘sloppy,’ but they were trying to do too much in the first half as a team,” Smikel said. “We made some bad decisions in the breakdown and offloading, and Rocky Mountain took full advantage of the situation because they’re a great team and they’re well coached.”
Eagle trailed by 16 points at the break, but the second half saw a cleaner, technically smarter game from the Mustangs. Smikel pointed to a trio of standout performances that drove the turn-around: Senior flyhalf and sometimes center Maddie Aubrey, who has a good rugby brain and a solid boot; Katelyn Walker, a gifted athlete and work horse, who inspires teammates from center; and No. 8 Reece Woods, who sets the standard for competitive, hard-working forwards.
The game became a shootout and Eagle was able to seal a 36-33 win.
“Our first game against Rocky Mountain was deadlocked at half and we won by seven, but this was the first time we’ve had to come back from so large a deficit,” Smikel said. “For them to get that final learning moment, it teaches them how you really have to fight to the end.”
“There were a handful of players who had the best match we’ve ever seen them play,” Smikel said. “Last weekend was a big coming-out party for a few of them. A ‘You’ve arrived,’ moment. But we’re very much a team-rugby type of team and don’t rely on a few players to do things. A lot of players had a very great match that to secure the team win.”
Meanwhile, Mountain View defeated Meridian 31-5 in its semifinal to advance to Saturday’s championship match. Smikel indicated that the Mavericks represent the team’s strongest rivalry, one that calls on some close matches in the fall – including an overtime loss – that have been hard to forget.
“The vibe is good,” Smikel said of the team’s current headspace. “The mentality is right for at least Karissa and Kloe, who have been in a high-stakes championship match before. They know what’s going on. And we have others who are great athletes and have been in similar situations with other sports. Understanding the pressures of what’s to come, that’s always a big benefit when heading into a playoff match or state championship. That experience of being there before makes a big difference. The nerves are always high, but they’re not disabling, because you’re able to view it differently. So they can mentor the younger players.”
Smikel said the key to Saturday’s game will be controlling the breakdown and possession. Eagle needs to be aggressive and physical, but also disciplined. Penalties have hurt the team in the past.
“I think they’re prepared,” Smikel said. “I told them early in the season at practice, ‘We’re preparing for a playoff run now. We have to get the work ethic and mentality right.’ And they responded.
“People have been calling their shots all season, that this was going to be the state championship match,” the coach closed. “I think it’ll be a battle.”
The girls’ high school DI state championship will occur Saturday, May 15 at Division II begins its playoffs on Friday, May 14. See the full schedule here.