The following article about the Sri Lanka U17 girls rugby 7s team has been kindly submitted by Sri lanka Rugby.
The Sri Lanka U17 girls left the Island with intentions of booking a spot for the youth Olympic Games in Buenus Aires next year as they participate in the Asian Qualifiers in Dubai.
This will be the second occasion where a junior girls’ team will be representing the country after the girls participated in the Under 18 Asia Sevens last year in Dubai.
The national body Sri Lanka Rugby has had extensive selections ahead of the Olympic qualifier conducting under 18 girls sevens tournament in the Western Province and in the Sabaragamuwa Province. A training squad was later finalized and brought to Colombo for training.
All players of the training squad except one are from outstation areas where women’s rugby is growing with five girls are from the GIR Programmes held in Sri Lanka including the Captain Umayangana Thathsarani the only player from Colombo and the Vice Captain Sachini Bhagya who hails from Mahiyanganaya
With the experience gained from the last tour the Sri Lankan girls will be confident of a good result. The Sri Lankan touring party is relatively new and it has been a challenge for the coach however coach Sudath Sampath expects the team to make good progress, heading into this tournament with intentions of winning, however, our first two games are against the Philippines ad Hong Kong so we will first focus on them without getting ahead of ourselves” With the rapid progress in which girls rugby is being developed, this will only help us in the future with women’s rugby in Sri Lanka as the juniors will progress to that level one day”
Dubai
