Cochrane's high school girls rugby teams continue to prove they're a force on the pitch.

Last weekend, both their junior and senior girls 7s teams returned with Rocky View divisional banners, and the week previous they beat the Holy Trinity Academy Knights for the first time ever.

The junior CobraCats won their second consecutive banner (the last tournament was held in 2019) by going undefeated against three other teams. They beat the Springbank Phoenix in the championship game, 20-7.

The senior girls also beat the Phoenix in the final to win their first divisional banner.

"That was the first real competition they'd had in the 7s," says Head Coach Steve Horton. "We'd never played 7s before--we had not even practiced 7s because we've been concentrating on 15s--so we had 10 minutes of practice before the first game."

They won that first game against the Chestermere Lakers, 15-5, before losing their only game of the tournament to the Phoenix, 10-7.

Horton says once they got the rhythm of 7s, they were able to dominate.

"The girls are eager to learn and they're having fun. I think that comes into it. There are some good athletes, and they're coachable. They're wanting to improve and learn themselves, so they're quite adaptable and they have a lot of energy. They had the right focus for the final, for sure."

Horton says they entered the season knowing Holy Trinity would offer the stiffest competition in the ASAA South Central Zone.

"No Cochrane rugby team has ever beaten Holy Trinity. [The Knights] had beaten Foothills Composite by 50-odd points to nil the week before, and we beat them 17-5, so it was a bit of a shock for them."

The CobraCats played in Strathmore last night and are now gearing up for their final regular-season game against the Foothills Academy next week. Horton believes they'll have a strong showing.

"You've got to take each game as it comes, and the referee for our game against Holy Trinity is the coach of Foothills, so he knows exactly how we play now. He's got a few weeks to coach the skills accordingly, but if they lost by over 50 points to a team we've just beaten, it looks favorable."