Seeing an opening, Kennedi Stevenson charged up the outside, calling for the ball. With her Canadian teammate on the move, Sarah Shoenfeld shovelled the ball back to her right and caught Stevenson in stride.
Stevenson outraced her Trinidad & Tobago opponents, crossing the try line and touching the ball down between the goal posts for her first national team try.
“Kennedi Stevenson - too big, too fast, too powerful for the T and T team to handle,” the commentator said.
The 17-year-old has left many opponents feeling the same way, which is quite incredible considering at the time she was helping Canada win a silver medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games, it had been less than 18 months since she started playing the sport.
In that time, the Glen Williams resident has amassed an impressive resume that already includes two provincial high school championships with Mayfield Secondary School and an Ontario Summer Games gold medal.
At her first high school tournament, with no more than a few games under her belt, Stevenson was already being approached by university coaches. After her first high school season, she was named a rising star by Rugby Ontario, which led to an invitation to try out for the Ontario under-18 team.
Rhys Manning, one of her coaches at Mayfield and the coach of the Ontario U18 boys team, called Stevenson’s mom just to make sure she was aware of her daughter’s potential in the sport. He wasn’t simply trying to build confidence in the young player, he said. He wanted to make sure she didn’t pass up on any of the incredible opportunities coming her way.
“I was trying to highlight that she’s something special,” Manning said. “I wanted her to realize that she could have a lot of success at a high level.”
Stevenson was still focused on volleyball – she played club with the Georgetown Impact – but “I figured there was no harm in trying.”
Though her mom was concerned about her then 15-year-old daughter playing rugby against older and presumably stronger players, Stevenson put those worries to rest early. She not only made the team, she scored the game’s first try in her debut with Ontario.
“She’s just a natural athlete and we definitely saw that in rugby,” Manning said. “The speed, the power and the footwork, they were already there. Then she’s tenacious and has a large competitive drive.”
It wasn’t the first time Stevenson had shown immediate potential in a sport. When her mom signed her up for recreational gymnastics classes, the instructors suggested after the first session that Stevenson should join the competitive program.
Stevenson eventually became a provincial-level gymnast until abruptly changing gears and taking up volleyball. She hoped volleyball would help her land a scholarship, but then rugby came along.
“It was just a sport I thought I would play at school,” she said.
Getting to don the maple leaf has changed that, though.
“It was definitely emotional,” she said. “I didn’t expect to get there so fast. I was proud of getting to represent Canada and Georgetown.”
Now, like her coaches, she sees the potential it holds. As a kid she dreamed of going to the Olympics. And at the Commonwealth Youth Games, she got a taste of that. Before the gold-medal game against Australia, they played both countries’ anthems.
“We were lined up together with our arms linked up and singing the anthem,” she said. “It felt like when I was watching the Olympics on TV, except it was happening.”
With what she has already accomplished, that dream may not be as far off as she thinks.
