The Whitehorse Gold Diggers are looking towards their sophomore season, with their first tournament of the season slated for mid June.

The team, which was formed last year, has been practising weekly ahead of Anchorage’s Midnight Sun Sevens tournament.

With some new, young talent on their roster, the team is looking to do big things in Anchorage.

Matthew Braga, 17, is one such player and is looking forward to being competitive at the tournament.

“I definitely don’t go there with the intentions of losing,” he said during a practice last week. “It’s going to be a fun tournament. I’d really like to see us win it.”

Braga started playing rugby at Saskatchewan’s Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, known for its hockey program, to fill in the gap between hockey seasons.

When he moved back to Whitehorse, he started playing with the team six months ago. He joins a roster of players with a lifetime of experience on the Gold Diggers.

“Playing here with these guys, a lot of them have been playing rugby longer than I’ve been alive,” said Braga. “You always look for opportunities to ask questions. Anybody out here, they’re all great guys and they’ll teach you anything you want to know.”

Rugby in the Yukon actually dates back to the 1990s, but as the new millennium approached, the Wolverines club dissolved.

It was resurrected in 2011 through games of pick-up touch rugby in the park, said Mike Fancie. Those eventually grew into more organized sessions and they fielded a contact team to play at the Midnight Sun Sevens tournament last year.

“That was the first time that we sent a team to compete in 15 years,” said Fancie. “It was a really exciting point for us just to be able to send a team to play competitively.”

They’ve ridden that momentum through the year, partnering with a few organizations to encourage the sport’s development in the Yukon.

Last fall Canadian Rugby World Cup player, Hubert Buydens hosted a round of clinics in Whitehorse.

The club has also had some success with a program called “Rookie Rugby,” which took place in schools last year to introduce students to the sport.

“It’s an amazing thing to watch,” said Fancie. “You literally have a coach stand in a room with a gaggle of kids and they split them into two groups and they say, ‘Here’s the ball, you can do whatever you want with it, it just has to end up on the other side of the room,’”

The coach continues to introduce more rules, saying you can only pass backwards and that you can stop someone by touching them with two hands.

“Within half and hour, you’ve taught someone functionally how to play rugby without ever having to explain what the rules are,” said Fancie.

“It’s just giving someone the opportunity to play and by the act of playing, people are learning how the game works and that’s what makes it so much fun.”

Fancie calls rugby a lifelong sport. He says that once people start playing it they don’t really want to stop.

He started playing when he was 11-years-old and living in England.

“It’s the one thing that’s been constant throughout my life. I changed jobs, I changed cities, I changed girlfriends, but I’ve always had rugby and that means a lot,” he said. “ I love the complexity. I don’t think there’s anyone on earth who can say they understand the rules 100 per cent.”

What makes rugby different from sports like soccer or hockey, he says, is that you don’t focus so much on plays or drills.

“Here you practise skills. You practise being able to think on your feet.” he said. “The sky’s the limit when you’re on the field and no two games are the same.”

There’s also the camaraderie.

“Everybody seems to have kind of a bond that just seems a little stronger than in other sports,” said Braga.

“Everybody’s got each other’s back.”

This team has been working on their skills and thinking on their feet, running drills that make players think fast and play smart.

Braga says that in the six months he’s been training with the team, they’ve come a long way.

“When I started in January, we couldn’t pass this well and we could’t work together that well and read each other,” he said. “Now everything is starting to flow.”

That’s going to work to their advantage later in the tournament.

“When everyone is tired and they have their bumps and bruises, that’s what’s going to help us the most,” said Braga.

“Everybody knows everybody pretty well out here so it’ll be good. We’ve got some chemistry going.”

The mix of players with young and old talent on the team means they will be versatile on the field.

“We can play any game. If a team wants to hit us hard, we can hit just as hard,” said Braga. “If a team wants to try to beat us fast, that’s going to be hard to do.”