Hannah Ehrhardt is used to being underappreciated. The aspiring gym teacher and Varsity Blues women’s rugby player knows what it feels like to not to get the recognition her efforts deserve.
“Phys-Ed is one of the hardest things to teach, just in terms of class-management. And playing on a team that is very underappreciated is very hard too, emotionally,” Ehrhardt admits. “When you’re putting your heart and soul into something and you’re not getting much in return, then no matter what you’re doing, it’s going to be difficult.”
The 2009 OUA All-Star didn’t even intend to be a rugby player when she joined U of T. “I ran track here at U of T in my first year, and I wasn’t really serious about rugby ‘til my second year at university,” she explains. “I was really, really into track all throughout high school and first-year university, and then I started getting more serious about rugby when I went to a tryout in second year.
“I got injured in my second year, which made me not be able to run track; that helped me with realizing that rugby was what I had preferred anyways.”
The seasons with the Blues’ rugby team since Ehrhardt switched sports have seen some mixed results. “We started off not very strong, but within the past three years I would say the program’s getting a lot stronger,” she says. “We never were really a team that other teams had an easy time beating, but we were always a team that teams did beat… This year was a breakout year for the Blues rugby team.”
The Blues went 2–3 in the regular season to take fourth place in the OUA Russell division and set up a quarter-final match-up with the McMaster Marauders. Toronto lost that game 0–48, but Ehrhardt points to some definite positives. “I think teams started to realize that they couldn’t take us for granted anymore,” she says. “And the OUA [Russel Division MVP] from this year (Karla Telidetzki) came from the Blues, so it was a huge accomplishment for us.”
Ehrhardt played out of position, at fly-half, for most of the season. “I would say I’m more of a natural scrum-half, which is generally for the smaller, shorter girls,” she explains. “But I enjoy playing fly-half because you get to make a lot of the decisions on where the ball’s going and you can read the field a lot more than scrum-half.”
Varsity Blues women’s rugby head coach Edward Sun believes that Ehrhardt made the most of her new role. “She was the main distributor on the team to move the ball into the hands of people that had specific roles,” Sun explained. “#10 isn’t her natural position, but she adjusted and had the attributes to do well at it.”
Sun believes that Ehrhardt’s natural athleticism and awareness contributed to her success. “Her background in track helped her with the running aspects of the position, and mentally, she realizes it’s a game of ‘numbers,’ especially at fly-half,” he said.
At 5’3”, Ehrhardt challenges the idea that rugby is a game for bigger, taller players. “I think rugby is a sport [in which] all body-types are accepted, and that’s why it’s such a good sport. It just completely crosses the spectrum,” she says. “There are different positions that cater to different body types, so it’s an inclusive sport.
“It’s changing a lot. You used to see a lot of tall and bigger girls, whereas now you’re seeing a lot of the teams, they’re the same size throughout, whether you’re playing in the front row, which is generally perceived as the bigger girls, [or] the back three, who are generally perceived as the smaller girls.”
Despite the potential for athletes of different body-types, Ehrhardt admits that rugby isn’t as popular as it could be. “Rugby in general is growing a lot, [but] it’s hard to just start and expect it to be super-popular among everyone,” she says. “That being said, Ontario is one of the strongest provinces for rugby.”
Ehrhardt also feels that rugby sometimes unfairly gets short shrift. “I don’t want to say it’s marginalized at U of T, but because it’s not as popular as maybe other sports it doesn’t get much coverage,” she says. It doesn’t help that the team played most of their games this season at UTSC. “Varsity Stadium isn’t even lined for rugby games, so it doesn’t make much sense to play there, which in itself is an issue.
“It was a little disappointing to me to find in my first year that you’re playing a Varsity sport but no one really cares.”
Ehrhardt and Sun both highlight the game against the University of Waterloo as the hight point of the season. “[Waterloo] were ranked eighth or ninth, and they were expecting to beat us, and we ended up beating them within the last few minutes of the game,” Ehrehardt explained. “I’ve done a lot of athletics in my life, not just rugby, and I think that was my number one, all-time sporting moment of my life.
“It was just the most incredible feeling of overcoming challenges and obstacles. The last four years, not really having been a winning team, and then … this final game against Waterloo, where we ended up winning within the last few minutes of the game — it was just an amazing feeling.”
Sun credits Ehrhardt with orchestrating the victory against Waterloo. “It was the highlight of the season; scoring five tries to one in the second half was a huge effort on everyone’s part.”
So what’s next? “My plan is to become a teacher, and I’m not completely ready to hang up my boots, but I’m not sure how much higher I want to go [with rugby],” Ehrhardt muses. “I’m not sure if I want to pass on my knowledge of rugby through coaching or if I want to continue to see how high I can make it and how much longer I can play for.
“I would like to play for as long as I can, but rugby’s a pretty brutal sport, so it’s not really an option to play later into your life. It’s the kind of sport that you have to do [when you’re young].”
Ehrhardt admits that leaving after years with the team is painful. “There’s definitely a feeling that it’s going to end. It’s actually pretty sad; there are a lot of tears shed at the end of the last game of a season.
“You make a lot of friendships too, so knowing that it’s coming to an end is a really strange feeling.”
