The Central women’s rugby team’s first home game of 2016 was pushed back a week after its game against the University of Oregon was cancelled, but now they are ready for rugby in Ellensburg.

The Wildcats (11-2) are hosting the University of Lethbridge Proghorns, from Alberta, Canada. Central set up this game to work on building relationships with Canadian teams.

“I know we’re trying to build a bridge between lots of the Canada teams and I think this will be a great start for our first home game, it’ll be great competition,” said junior flank and lock Carrie Vaillancourt.

The Proghorns (2-6-1) are an all-Canadian rugby squad, giving the Wildcats a tough opponent for their first home game of the season.

“The rugby in Canada is a little more developed than the U.S. so we know it’ll be a quality competition,” head coach Mel Denham said.

This game was setup by Denham because she knows the Proghorn’s head coach Ric Suggitt through USA Rugby. That is all Denham knows about her opponent.

“I don’t know much [about Lethbridge], which is a fun thing… just going out into the field and adapting to what’s in front of us is what we’re always trying to do,” Denham said.

She expects a quality match because of the coaches’ rugby rapport.

Central will face a ball running style that many Canadian teams play.

“The type of defense we play is pressure defense, we launch to kill, I dare them to run with the ball, that’s going to be good for us,” Vaillancourt said.

Denham and Vaillancourt talked about the need of practicing being under pressure in a game time scenario.

“I am so excited we had a bye weekend so it gave us a lot of time to prep for this game,” Vaillancourt said. “We’ve been working on a lot of tactical decision making.”

This is not the first time the Wildcats have played a Canadian team this season. They suffered their only two losses of the season in the University of Victoria 7’s Tournament on Feb. 21.

Central lost 34-12 against Aptoella and 15-12 to British Columbia Select. The Wildcats won the final game of the tournament 17-5, which was good for fifth place.

“We faced quality competition versus some of the top Canadian teams that featured former and current national team players,” Denham told WildcatSports.com after the tournament. “These are the competitions that will raise our standard of play, which we could see throughout the day today.”

Central also had a game against University of British Columbia, another Canadian squad, on March 19 but it was cancelled.

Denham is looking for this game to work on her team’s season-long goals.

“You never know what to expect, hopefully we come out on top, but obviously never come in expecting to win,” Vaillancourt said.