LeCanadian

Top Menu

  • Login
  • Archives
  • Les Actualités
  • Advertising
  • Sexy Pages
  • Contact Us

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Foodie
  • Headline
  • Health
  • Editorials
  • Lifestyle
  • Sports
  • UFO · Exopolitics
  • City
  • Sexuality
  • Dating
  • Login
  • Archives
  • Les Actualités
  • Advertising
  • Sexy Pages
  • Contact Us

logo

Header Banner

LeCanadian

  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Foodie
  • Headline
  • Health
  • Editorials
  • Lifestyle
  • Sports
  • UFO · Exopolitics
  • City
  • Sexuality
  • Dating
  • Comment gérer un retard de vol ?

  • 5 ways sudoku boosts brain health

  • 10 tips to successfully market your law firm

  • 7 Amazing Gifts for Kids Who Like to Cook

  • Make Mortgage Overpayments Work for You

Sports
Home›Sports›Megan Lukan walked away from rugby three times. Now she’s competing for Canada at the Olympics

Megan Lukan walked away from rugby three times. Now she’s competing for Canada at the Olympics

By admin
August 3, 2016
1394
0
Share:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The plan, loosely stated, went something like this.

Megan Lukan would parlay her basketball skills into an NCAA scholarship and a professional job in Europe. The national team and the Olympics were also a possibility, but her priority was always the city game and her flirtation with this other sport didn’t offer anywhere near the opportunities that hoops offered.

“It was always basketball,” says the 24-year-old from Barrie. “Rugby was on the back burner.”

Not any more.

On Saturday, Lukan will line up for Canada in the first-ever Olympic women’s rugby sevens tournament, completing a long, strange odyssey that took her from the national developmental team in roundball to a starring five-year turn at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to the rugby training centre in Victoria to Brazil.

Along the way she walked away from rugby on three different occasions — believing she’d never play the sport again each time — but, always, she came back.

And now here she is in Rio, her audacious Olympic dream realized.

“I didn’t take the route others have taken,” Lukan says.

But when your ambition is fuelled by a five-alarm fire, it will take you to some strange and wonderful places.

“I wouldn’t have put her in my projected 12 (for the Olympics) last year,” says national team coach John Tait. “She just took her opportunities and she performed. She’s not our fastest or strongest athlete, but no one will outwork her. Sometimes the problem is turning off the switch and that’s not a bad problem to have as a coach.”

Lukan first came under Tait’s watch in April 2015, just a couple of weeks after her collegiate career ended with UWGB’s first-round loss to Princeton in the NCAA tournament. To that point, she hadn’t played rugby since her senior year of high school but the national team coaching staff was well aware of Lukan, largely because assistant coach Sandro Fiorino had scouted her in high school.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

“She made a huge impression,” said Fiorino, who coached McMaster at the time and was involved with the Ontario provincial team. “She was the best player (at the Ontario high school championship). You don’t let an athlete like that go.”

Fiorino and Tait would maintain contact with Lukan over her final two years at Green Bay and eventually sold her on the national team program. The good news was, as a member of a Division-I school and a former member of the Canadian development team, she was familiar with the demands of high-performance programs.

The other news was, technically, that experience was in basketball and she had to learn how to play the most demanding form of rugby from scratch.

“She knew about the work involved,” says Tait. “My concern was if she’d be afraid of the contact, but she stuck her nose right in there.”

Lukan would move in with the family of national team assistant Morgan Willliams and accelerated her development through concentrated backyard sessions with the coach. It also helped Lukan that injuries to several veterans, including stars Ghislaine Landry and Ashley Steacy, opened up playing time in the runup to Rio.

You don’t let an athlete like that go

When the national team was announced in early July, Tait caused a mini-furor when he named Lukan to the roster over, among others, Magali Harvey, the 2013 women’s player of the year in the 15’s version of the game.

There was, however, no controversy in Tait’s mind.

“The players selected were the most consistent performers at their position,” Tait says. “Team selection starts with who’s performing best.”

As for her continuing rugby education, Lukan says her basketball skills come in handy. At Green Bay she was team’s point guard, which meant she was in charge of distributing and facilitating for her teammates. Turns out it’s the same drill in rugby, except for the part where she gets pounded like a post.

“I think the biggest thing is the vision and finding the advantages, the three-on-twos and two-on-ones,” says Lukan. “I was a point guard in basketball so I had to see the whole court. Now I try to see the whole field.”

Read More..

Post Views: 1,464
Previous Article

Denis Shapovalov Defeats Luke Saville at Granby ...

Next Article

Dickey comes to rescue of depleted bullpen ...

0
Shares
  • 0
  • +
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Related articles More from author

  • Sports

    Raps’ Poeltl a Big Fish in a Small Hoops Pond

    June 25, 2016
    By admin
  • Sports

    Kansas City Chiefs Keep AFC West Title Hopes Alive, Eliminate Defending Champion Denver Broncos From Playoff Contention

    December 27, 2016
    By admin
  • Sports

    Canadiens could use the Forum ghosts now at Bell Centre

    December 13, 2017
    By admin
  • Sports

    Jets Coach Todd Bowles Hospitalized Day Before Facing Patriots

    December 24, 2016
    By admin
  • Sports

    Yankees’ Mark Teixeira Plans to Retire at Season’s End

    August 6, 2016
    By admin
  • Sports

    Eskimos Defeat Tiger-Cats 24-21 in East Division Semifinal

    November 16, 2016
    By admin

Featured Petition

  • Bell Baker’s John Summers – Stop a Crime Against Humanity – What would his Mother think?
  • John E Summers: Ottawa Lawyer Attacks Motherhood and Civil Rights – Support His Disbarment
  • Stop Ottawa Lawyer John Summers’, Marcella Carby-Samuels’ & David Tenenbaum’s Ab
  • Week
  • Month

Week

Sorry. No data so far.

Month

Sorry. No data so far.

Popular on The Le Canadian

  1. AgoraCosmopolitan
  2. Agora Publishing Consortium
  3. Le Journal Canadien
  4. Dominion: Food News
  5. LeCanadian.com
  6. The Ottawa Star
  7. Capitalistocracy.com
  8. Agora Books Author House
  9. First Nations Press
  10. The Etiquette Show
  11. Ontario People's Front





Mark's



Recent Posts

  • Comment gérer un retard de vol ?
  • 5 ways sudoku boosts brain health
  • 10 tips to successfully market your law firm
  • 7 Amazing Gifts for Kids Who Like to Cook
  • Make Mortgage Overpayments Work for You
  • Son shares warning for immunocompromised after fully-vaccinated Tampa Bay dad dies from COVID-19
  • Catching Covid-19 after being vaccinated isn’t a myth. It happened to me
  • My COVID Story: “I got COVID after being fully vaccinated”
  • Albertans fully vaccinated for COVID-19 urged to stay cautious during pandemic’s 4th wave
  • I got the vaccine – and then I got Covid: Readers share their stories

Most Viewed Posts

No Posts found

Visitors

  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Foodie
  • Headline
  • Health
  • Editorials
  • Lifestyle
  • Sports
  • UFO · Exopolitics
  • City
  • Sexuality
  • Dating