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Queen's Women's Rugby completes Garnet & Gold sweep with 26-5 win over United States U23 Team

Queen's Athletics

Queen's Women's Rugby completed the Garnet & Gold Classic undefeated, beating the United States U23 Team 26-5 Tuesday in Ottawa, Ont.

2021 U SPORTS First Team All-Canadian and OUA Shiels Division All-Star Carmen Izyk led the Gaels' offence with two tries in the win. Izyk tied for the team lead in tries last season with five.

Jaden Walker and Elena Pinkerton also scored tries for Queen's in the 21-point win. It marked the second straight game Walker found the scoresheet after recording two tries against the United States U20 Team on Sunday.

"The opportunity to get in the ring and compete with these programs was pretty special to begin with but to sit here on the other side of it, having earned two very comprehensive victories is pretty unreal," said Queen's Women's Rugby Head Coach Dan Valley. "If you had told me at the outset of this that's where we'd be, I don't know if I would have believed you. That's a testament to the work our squad did both in our camp and in the weeks and months leading into this opportunity. As far as Tuesday's match, that was a very big, very athletic USA U23 side, and we knew they were going to bring a different level of physicality the U20s brought on Sunday, and that was our point of emphasis going in, making sure there was always two gold jerseys going into any of those confrontations. We needed to make sure that we were flying around like a pack of wolves and I thought we did an excellent job of that."

2019 OUA and U SPORTS Rookie of the Year and All-Canadian Lizzie Gibson added two converts for the Gaels in the win.

Queen's completed the two-game Garnet & Gold Classic tournament giving up only one try and outscoring their opponents by a combined score of 102-5.

"I thought the tournament was an awesome opportunity," said Valley. "It's neat to be able to provide this opportunity for our student-athletes and this is something they can talk about in 30 years. That's a pretty impactful opportunity. And it's certainly given us a nice platform to launch into our training camp, so from that sense it was a win as well. It's definitely something that I hope we'll continue to do."

The host Ottawa Gee-Gees women's rugby team also completed the sweep of the United States squads, defeating the U23 team 35-24 before topping the U20 team 26-5.