Knight time struck for a historic back-to-back rugby championship.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights became just the second team in provincial history to repeat a Tier 1 boys rugby fifteens title on Saturday after defeating the Bowness Trojans 29-0 to capture the Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association banner on June 7 in Lethbridge.
“The biggest difference is last year we came in knowing we have the greatest chance of winning,” said HTA full back Avery Laliberte, one of nine seniors on the team. “This year we had to fight, and we knew it wasn’t going to be given to us.
“It was moving the ball and supporting our players, nobody went in thinking it was going to be a single player effort. We all worked together and just played good rugby.”
In the final, the Knights opened the scoring through Ashton Power and after a try saving tackle from Laliberte took control of the game.
“Our coach Jason Krueger got us amped up and after that it was home free,” said HTA outside centre Ryan Maloney. “We just played hard and pounded that ball in there.
“They put up a fight for the first seven minutes, they were good, and then Avery had that try saving tackle near our end zone and that was one of the better moments of this game.”
Laliberte, Cayden McCullough and Ben Haden added the other tries with Cade Huggard notching the converts.
“We knew that we needed to be dialed in,” said McCullough. “It had been a pretty good weekend of rugby, we just needed to go in and remember that these guys also want to win it and to remember to go in tough and do what we do.
“We have a lot of athletes on our team and our guys just really wanted it. There was a couple of runs from a bunch of guys where they just really didn’t give up.”
HTA opened the eight-team competition in a comprehensive 34-0 triumph over Red Deer’s Lindsay Thurber to set the platform for a weekend of success.
“In that first game, we were able to see the difference in a team we hadn’t seen before which helped us to prepare for the rest of the games,” said Haden. “With Wise Wood, we knew most of their good players and some of our guys from last year told us about their team.”
The Knights passed their stiffest test of the weekend in grabbing a 10-7 semifinal victory over a tough Henry Wise Wood Warriors squad.
Haden’s try in the late stages vaulted HTA to the final.
“We saw them at Clearwater Cup and lost to them there, so we went into that game with a bit of a chip on our shoulder,” McCullough said. “We wanted to let them know who we are, what we can do and how we play.”
In addition to the Tier I rugby title, several members of the Knights also took home the provincial football banner in the fall with members of the 2025 graduating class owning two titles in each of the sports over the three years.
“We’ve got a good group of guys,” McCullough said. “And we hope they can run it back next year as well.”
