PARIS — The Canadian women’s rugby sevens team will be returning to Starlight Stadium on wings of silver.
The Langford-based national team made it all the way to the gold-medal final of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games before top-ranked New Zealand stopped the Canuck run with a 19-12 victory before 66,000 fans.
It was still a triumphant silver-medal achievement for sa国际传媒, which led the all-conquering Kiwis — defending their Tokyo 2020 title — 12-7 at the half.
“There’s the whole range of all human emotions,” said starting sa国际传媒 player Caroline Crossley of Victoria. “There’s disappointment, there’s pride, there’s sadness. There’s love for my team. Everything you can possibly feel, I’m feeling right now.
“This time last year, we were ranked ninth,” she added. “Now we’re second in the world.”
The Crossley family travelled from Victoria to Paris to watch the Oak Bay Secondary graduate and Castaway Wanderers club product play in the Olympics. She leaned over the stadium railings following the game to embrace them.
“I mostly just cried,” Crossley said. “I hugged them and put my medal around their necks because it’s as much their medal as it is mine.”
sa国际传媒 went 2-1 in group play — losing 33-7 to New Zealand — before recording stunning upset victories over host France 19-14 in the quarter-finals and world No. 2 Australia in the semis, a game that saw the Canadians rally from being down 12-0 to win 21-12.
Crossley said if someone had told her before the tournament that sa国际传媒 would be leading New Zealand at half-time of the gold-medal game, “I don’t know if I would have believed it, honestly.”
“This whole day has just been like a dream. I’m still in shock from our quarter-final win, not because I didn’t think we could do it, but we have been so close so many times and now it lined up just perfectly for us.
“It will take a while to process all this. I don’t know if all of us really believed that we would medal. But we knew we had the ability to beat any team in this competition.”
Charity Williams is the only Canadian player to have played in all three Olympic tournaments at which rugby sevens has been contested since its introduction at the Rio Games in 2016. The Canadian team won bronze that year.
“Every word you can think of, I’m feeling it,” Williams said. “When we got bronze in Rio, I was 19 and just a rookie, and was barely involved and got to take home something shiny. This time I feel I was so much a part of this team. We all pulled it together when we needed it most. The girls put everything out there. I’m so proud.”
Williams missed two years with injuries: “That was such a grind and such a battle. And getting from ninth place in the world to second was such a grind and such a battle.”
Now the Toronto native, who is 27, said she might try for the next Olympics, to be held in Los Angeles in 2028. “I do need all three [medals]. It’ll be collectible.”
