The girl who wasn’t supposed to be there, Annie Kennedy, has been named to the national under-18 women’s rugby team despite not originally being invited to the tryouts.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to make it because I was under-sized, I felt like the underdog,” Kennedy said Saturday. “Then I got the email and I couldn’t believe it.”

On Feb. 16, Rugby Canada announced that Kennedy and 23 other athletes were named to Canada’s under-18 women’s team. The group will travel to the United Kingdom for a tour, including two games against England’s national under-18 team at the beginning of April. Kennedy was also named to the Ontario Junior Storm Sevens, the provincial team that will compete in the National Under-18 Sevens Championships Tournament starting Thursday in Vancouver.

“The rugby aspect of the England tour is what I’m most excited for,” Kennedy said. “I’ve played with a ton of the girls that are on the Canada team right now, and I just love them all. It’ll be great to spend a week with them.”

Little did the 18-year-old fly half-turned-scrum half know that making a responsible choice in the spring of 2015 could have delayed her rugby career. Planning ahead for an easier courseload in her senior year at Regiopolis-Notre Dame in order to train and compete more, Kennedy attended summer school. This prevented her from being seen by scouts at major summer tournaments with the eastern Ontario team, the Ontario team and the Kingston Panthers. So she was overlooked and wasn’t added to the long list of athletes invited to the October tryouts.

Hearing the news, Brad Greenwood — Kennedy’s coach with Regiopolis, the Panthers club team and the eastern Ontario team — knew he had to do something.

“I called (national coach Dan Valley) and said, ‘I think you’re missing a premier rugby athlete from our area,’ and I wanted to know what we could do to get her into the trials to give her a shot,” Greenwood said. “I knew that Annie was a quality athlete, and I knew she would show well at a trial like that. She’s a good player … for me it was just getting her the opportunity to show her skills and she would have to do the rest from there.”

So with her videographers, better known as mom Lorraine and big sister Grace, Kennedy created a highlight reel. When Valley saw it, he knew he had to invite her.

“It’s pretty cool how it played out for her,” Valley said. “It was a pretty easy decision to invite her out to the tryout camps. Then she performed exceptionally well, and she’s done a lot of work in between those camps, and so I’m really excited for her. She certainly deserves the opportunity. She has a pretty cool career ahead of her hopefully.”

Many of the segments of the highlight reel, Valley said, showed Kennedy playing against high school athletes who were strong, but certainly not at a national calibre.

“I was really impressed how her strengths were able to transfer over so seamlessly,” Valley said. “She was still able to make people miss, and these were some really, really talented athletes. She was able to show them things they may or may not have experienced before, which was really interesting to watch.”

She may have been interesting, but Kennedy said she was nervous.

“It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Kennedy said. “The first day was so tiring. I remember the first day (Valley) said he wanted us to get violent with each other. So it just all got thrown at us.”

When Kennedy started playing rugby in Grade 9, high school coach Maria Kerby had her at the wing that year because she was so fast. As the years went on, Kennedy’s confidence in the game grew and she was moved further inside and closer to the decision making.

“She’s a very quick thinker, a split-second decision maker,” Kerby said. “Depending on the position she’s playing, if she’s fly half she’s basically deciding what play the team is going to run and reading the defence and making those game-time decisions.

“But she’s also crazy fast. So we also like to get her out running with the ball because she’s a hard runner and she’s hard to tackle.”

Because of Kennedy’s skills, Valley isn’t sure where he is going to put her on the field. She’s a scrum half/fly half hybrid who is able to play both positions.

“Annie is quite interesting,” Valley said. “But on this tour I feel comfortable with her running out of any of the back positions to be totally honest … Annie’s skill-set lends itself really nicely to playing in any of those positions, which is rare. You don’t often have the ability to perform in each of them. Two or three maybe, but she could play in any of them.”

At five-foot-three, Kennedy admits she’ll need to spend some more time in the gym to add some weight. Valley agrees, especially if Kennedy would like to some day be on the senior women’s team.

“Given her size, she doesn’t win the battle of physics all that often. Fortunately she makes up for it being quite strong and constantly improving technically,” Valley said. “But she’ll need to add a little bit of muscle to the frame in order to continue on this trajectory.”

Greenwood said it goes beyond rugby ability with Kennedy.

“She’s a quality individual and just a nice kid,” Greenwood said. “I’m happy this has happened for her.”

Despite being a group of athletes that will represent Canada in England, the team is pay-to-play. That means Kennedy and her teammates need to pay $3,500 apiece to represent their country. Thankfully, the team is able to raise funds online. To help Kennedy travel, go to donate.rugbycanada.ca/e/akennedy.

The under-18 Canadian women’s team will play in England on April 5 and April 9. Kickoff times and streaming details have yet to be announced. For more information, go to rugbycanada.ca.

scrosier@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/StephattheWhig