Everything Janna Slevinsky does is based on rugby.
The 21-year-old St. Albert, AB native says she is “100 per cent passionate” about rugby.
“I love everything about it,” she says.
Slevinski is in the fourth and final year of a Kinesiology degree at Acadia. Her time in Wolfville, and as an Acadia student-athlete, has been “an amazing experience.”
This year, she is a co-captain, a team leader and a player that Acadia head coach Matt Durant calls “the best player I’ve ever coached.”
Slevinsky started playing rugby when she was in Grade 10. She suffered a torn ACL in her knee in her senior year in high school that required surgery, and as a result, took a year off after Grade 12.
During that time, she was contacted by Durant, who told her about Acadia and the Axewomen program and recruited her.
“It took me five minutes to Google the school, see the campus and decide to come,” she said. “I’d never been east of Montreal before I drove out here, but I knew I’d made a good choice the minute I arrived.”
She joined an Axewomen team that was on the cusp of great things – and has improved every year since she arrived.
She also arrived with a clean bill of health.
“I had cleared with my surgeon three days before I left for here. Knock on wood, my knee has been great ever since,” she said.
Not an easy sport
“I’ve always been athletic, but rugby didn’t come easy to me at first. I was very close to quitting the first year I played,” she said.
“I realized I was going to have to work at it, and that it wasn’t going to come easy to me. There’s no such thing as a perfect rugby player.”
A flanker, or number eight, Slevinsky plays a lot of her time as part of the scrum.
“At my position, you have to be in the right place at the right time in order to score. Luckily, I have been,” she said.
In Acadia’s Sept. 14 win over Saint Mary’s, Slevinsky was fortunate enough to score three tries out of a single-game school record 19 in a lopsided 115-0 victory.
She added that the Axewomen players “support each other” when they advance the ball.
“If you happen to be the closest person to the ball, or the last person to touch it,” you get credit for the points, she said.
In the win over Saint Mary’s, nine different Axewomen scored at least one try, led by Shannon White with four and Slevinsky and Laura Klingenberg with three each.
“Any player on our team is capable of scoring at any time,” Slevinsky said, “and on defence, it’s a lot harder to watch 15 players than to watch one.”
Eye on the championship
Slevinsky believes “this is definitely the year Acadia breaks through and wins the AUS. We had a big class of rookies my first year. We always said we were working on a four–year plan, so hopefully this is the year.”
The Axewomen made it to the conference final a year ago before being edged by St. F.X., after having beaten the X-women during the regular season.
“After experiencing last year’s loss in the championship game, none of us ever want to feel that way again,” she said. “We’ll be trying our best to avoid that this time around.”
The difference between last year’s and this year’s team, Slevinsky said, “last year, a lot of our confidence came from having Emilie Chiasson on our team.”
Chiasson, she pointed out, “was a great player, and beyond that, she gave us a lot of confidence. We all had to increase our level of play to match her.”
This year, without Chiasson but with a year’s added experience and maturity, “we’re a bunch of good players, but together we’re a great team. We know we have the talent to win, and we won’t be relying on one player to score all our points.”
Looking forward
Slevinsky is eligible to graduate in the spring of 2015, but she still has a year of eligibility left, “so we’ll have to wait and see.” She would consider returning for a fifth season if everything else fell into place.
As for her post-Acadia future, she is prepared to see where life takes her.
“I’d eventually like to do another degree in nursing. Unfortunately, Acadia doesn’t offer that, and I know my parents would like me to be a little closer to home.”
