Beukeboom: “Rugby has helped shape who I am today” and “test matches against Italy and Wales are huge”

Looking back on her younger self, Canada Women’s 15s second row Tyson Beukeboom describes her personality as “shy”. That may come as a surprise given she was raised in such a bustling, sports-centric household.

Her cousins, Matt and Brett, are rugby players while her other two cousins are on the national women’s water polo team. Her mom was a track athlete, her brother a hockey player and her father, Jeff Beukeboom, played in the NHL for the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers, winning the Stanley Cup on four occasions.

“It was pretty cool being in a sporting family,” Tyson said. “It was probably different than what people think. I think people think our parents were saying that we needed to be athletes, but it was very much the opposite. They wanted us to have fun, be happy and do what we love.”

See Tyson and the rest of Canada’s Women’s 15s in action against Italy in Langford, BC or versus Wales in Halifax, NS. Click here to buy tickets now.

Among family members, Beukeboom would regularly boast that one day she’d “play hockey for Team Canada” as that was her sport of choice at the time. Whereas in larger social settings, especially when around people she didn’t know, she would find the situation “intense” and “scary”. That was until she found rugby.

Tyson was originally introduced to the sport by a cousin and was attracted by the game’s physicality. She played regularly throughout high school alongside hockey and was met by a fork in the road in Grade 11, when she was trying out for Team Ontario in both sports.

“I made it to the second cut for both teams,” she explained. “At that point, I hadn’t fully latched onto rugby as I had hockey. I decided I would focus on hockey and take a step back from rugby. I called the U17 Ontario coach and told him what I was doing and he said ‘you can’t do that. You can’t not play rugby. You have the potential to play for Canada one day. Don’t quit rugby’.”

That was the lightbulb moment that ensured Tyson turned her entire attention to the egg-shaped ball rather than the rubber puck. The carrot of playing for her country was just too tempting, and since then the forward has never looked back. She began playing for the Oshawa Vikings and, within a year or two, broke into Canada’s Women’s U20s program.

Later, she would switch clubs to the Aurora Barbarians before she moved to Vancouver Island. In between time, Beukeboom received her first cap for Canada. It’s a moment she won’t forget, not least due to the circumstances that surrounded her callup.

“That first cap was a huge surprise to me, for that tour specifically,” she said. “I was originally a non-travelling reserve. Not even two weeks before, I got a call asking what I was doing in two weeks and if I could be on a plane to Denver. Time stopped and it was the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She added: “Then we got to Denver and I was terrified. I think I was 22 at the time. All these women that I’d been looking up to my entire life and striving to be able to play with, I was actually going to. In the first game, going into it as a non-travelling reserve, you’re kind of expecting that you’re probably not going to get an opportunity to play. I ended up dressing and coming off the bench for my first cap and it just happened to be the very first time that we beat England.”

Fast-forward to 2022 and Beukeboom has 47 caps, has been to two Rugby World Cups and is aiming to go to a third as part of Kevin Rouet’s travelling squad to New Zealand later this year. Now 31 years old, she has assumed a mentor’s role among the group. Quite the 360 from the timid teenager who struggled in large social settings when she first took up the sport over a decade ago.

“At the end of the day, when they’re situations you end up thriving in, it really pulls you out of your shell,” she discussed. “That’s what rugby has done for me, really helped shape who I am today, developing me into someone who does look for challenging opportunities as opposed to shying away.”

Casting her mind ahead to July 24’s test match against Italy – Canada’s Women’s 15s first at home since 2015 – Beukeboom, who has called Vancouver Island her home for seven-and-a-half years and lives with her partner, two dogs and cat, is thrilled at the prospect of playing in front of a home crowd at Starlight Stadium.

“It’s so exciting to be able to play on home soil and have people actually come and physically see what we’re capable of,” Beukeboom continued. “For me, it’s super exciting. My partner has never actually seen me play an international game and we’ve been together for five years so she finally gets to come and watch me play on the international stage. We’re really excited that our fans get to come out and watch us instead of having to find a link or look for it on TV.”

After the match against Italy, all attention will switch to Wales in Halifax, NS on August 27. And Beukeboom believes the magnitude of both test matches cannot be overstated as preparations for the Rugby World Cup ramp up.

“They’re huge,” she said. “It’s a really good opportunity for our team to connect and build some camaraderie. We need to build on our connections and just build until we get to World Cup. So, having these two matches are really huge.”