Article content continued

“Immediately after the final whistle, I was emotional,” he said. “A week later, I’m not sure if it’s quite the right word, but it’s a bit bittersweet. It’s hitting me now: I won’t be coaching anymore.”

Even if the hole in his daily schedule that rugby coaching took up is smaller than it used to be, especially while he was still a teacher at Carson Graham, there’s still a hole to fill. He may go watch games here and there, but he knows that will be a difficult thing to do.

“I’m not going to go all the time, I don’t want to get caught up in it,” he admitted.

Credit for the genesis of his school coaching career goes to a handful of girls who wanted to start a rugby team at the North Van secondary school in the mid-’90s. Baker had played rugby when he was a student at Sutherland Secondary.

He agreed to be a teacher-sponsor and found himself helping out David Smortchevsky, then a player at Capilano Rugby Club.

It was the beginning of a boom for female rugby in the province.

“There might have been 10 or 12 girls teams in the province when we started,” he said. “But within 10 years there were 45-50 schools with teams. Last weekend there are 75 teams.”

One of the players on his early teams was Andrea Burk, who went on to represent Canada for many years and is considered one of the country’s greatest backs.

“He has put in a lot of time and a lot of his year into women’s rugby and the development of girls rugby,” she said over the phone from Toronto, where she’s started to make a name for himself as a rugby commentator. “I’m sure somebody could do the math and figure out how many people have been beneficiaries of his time; it’s really incredible and the landscape of rugby for women in B.C. has grown because of people like Brad.