The University of Victoria Vikes have won the 2026 USport Women’s Rugby Championship. On Sunday, the Vikes defeated the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds 17-0 in the gold medal game from Alumni Stadium in Guelph, Ontario to win the Molinex Trophy.
In an all-British Columbia championship game, the Vikes got tries from Emily Findlay of Regina, Saskatchewan, Piper Walsh of Luskville, Quebec and Larah Wright of Calgary, Alberta. Victoria also received a two-point conversion from Maggie MacKinnon of Victoria, British Columbia. Findlay was named the Thunderbirds’s top player of the game.
The Vikes entered the national championship as the second seed. They defeated Brock 52-7 in the quarterfinals and Laval 27-24 in overtime in the semifinal.
This was the Vikes’s first ever USport Women’s Rugby Championship. Victoria had been to the final the last three years, but lost. They were beaten 22-5 to the University of Laval Rouge et Or in Quebec City, Quebec in 2023, lost 8-3 to the Thunderbirds in 2024 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and lost 15-13 to the Thunderbirds again in 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In another interesting statistic, the last three years have been an all-British Columbia final in USport women’s rugby. These have been the only three times in the history of the tournament (dating back to 1998), that an all-British Columbia USport Women’s Rugby Championship have taken place.
This was the fourth shutout in a USport Women’s Rugby gold medal game. The University of Western Mustangs beat the University of Alberta Pandas 22-0 in Victoria in 2005, the Guelph Gryphons beat the St. Francis Xavier X-Women 28-0 in Peterborough, Ontario in 2011, and the X-Women beat the Gryphons 37-0 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 2012.
