Borsboom attended her first Team Canada camp in 2019, and her latest this past fall
Women’s rugby star Tylo Borsboom started her Gee-Gees career career in 2018, appearing in six regular-season games and providing all that was needed to help the team achieve an undefeated regular season.
The Winnipeg native broke out at the RSEQ championship, where she scored three tries, totalling 15 points, winning the championship, and later helping the U of O take the bronze medal at the U SPORTS national championships.
However, rugby was not always the clear path to success for her. Borsboom retells the story of how she fell in love with rugby by surprise and as an accident.
In Winnipeg, long before she stepped foot on Matt Anthony Field — or any rugby field for that matter — Borsboom was playing boys tackle football, which led her to a girls tackle football team.
“Someone’s parent actually approached me and said that, if I loved football so much, that I should try rugby, and I would be good at rugby, and you can play it at university,” recounted Borsboom.
At 16, Borsboom “immediately fell in love with it,”, and started going on provincial tours with Rugby Manitoba, reaching out to universities, ultimately finding herself at the U of O doing an undergrad in computer science and communications, becoming a Gee-Gee, and later a Gee-Gees legend.
Team Canada
After her rookie season with the Gee-Gees, Borsboom attended the Canadian U20 camp in 2019, which showcased her impressive abilities, immense talent, and career growth.
With a knee injury following the camp and then the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 season was left with much to be desired. However, this wouldn’t be her only Team Canada experience; it wasn’t her only camp, as she clearly remembers her amazing experience at Team Canada’s U23 camp during the summer of 2023, where they won their two games against the US and converted the experience into a fantastic memory.
Borsboom told the Fulcrum of how she got to play with so many of the other amazing youth sports legends she had played against for the last couple of years. “Game always respects game,” said Borsboom. “So, it was so fun to be on a team with people I had been going head-to-head with and admiring on other teams.”
Yet, her national team experience doesn’t end there. Borsboom was invited to — and cracked the top 36 at — the senior team’s WXV camp this past fall in Victoria. where she went to play and learn from “the best players in Canada and some of the best of the world.”
Borsboom still hopes to play with the women’s senior team one day, that hasn’t changed, “but it just feels so much more meaningful, because I know all of their characters and they’re all lovely people.”
Gee-Gees
2019 did not begin how any athlete would hope to kick start their career; Borsboom started hers with an ACL tear, in which she had a medical redshirt recovery year, which it in itself is a big opportunity for athletes, however, Borsboom recounts how emotionally and physically draining the recovery process can be.
“There’s days when you don’t want to leave your house,” said Borsboom.” There’s days when you’re so down you can’t, like think about doing anything, forget about going to training, but you show up; and every time I would leave, I was so happy that I showed up, because the team has that effect on me.”
Her recovery is proof of her resilience and dedication to the game, as well as the love for it and the team that grew up to be her family; stating “They just are always rooting for me, whether it’s cheering me on when I’m doing the silliest little exercises for rehab or in those big moments, you know when, when I do show up for the team and really give it my all and perform really well for them.”
Borsboom kick-started her second year with the Gee-Gees by starting all six regular season games and earning a game MVP after finishing as the second-highest scorer on the team with five tries.
2021 was the year that Borsboom describes with the word “grit.” Not only did she play in both playoff games as Ottawa won the RSEQ silver medal, but she also started all three games at the U SPORTS National Championship, scoring a try in the quarterfinal against St. FX, glorifying her efforts and proving her presence on the field, becoming a critical tool to the team, as the Gee-Gees captured the silver medal.
However, for her, it wasn’t only the rugby field that comes into memory but the things she and the players had to go through that year; with a change in leadership and an offseason without a coach, she remembers the team falling apart after playing 110 minutes of rugby and “feeling like she had gone to war.”
Her third and fourth years rounded her as an athlete, with her again attending the U SPORTS National Championship and helping the Gee-Gees to the bronze medal in 2022.
2023 was a banner year for the back row. Starting in five regular season games and scoring six tries earned her a 2023 U SPORTS First Team All-Canadian nod, while she also played in all three U SPORTS national championship games, scoring two tries against St. FX, which helped the Gee-Gees advance to the fifth-place match.
Sadly, most athletes know the pain that comes when you are at your highest performance, and an injury takes you out… well Borsboom is not a stranger to that either.
Just this past year, 2024, at the RSEQ final, the star player would suffer a torn ACL in the first half, right after scoring the first try of the game and helping teammate Leigha Stiles score another one.
Losing a key player like her not only is critical for a season, but it also creates a cloud of uncertainty about the result of the game. Gee-Gees head coach Duncan McNaughton commented on that at the time, saying, “To be honest, initially I didn’t think we could recover from her loss.” Sadly, McNaughton was right, the Gee-Gees didn’t, and ended up losing in the final seconds.
However, after that insanity of a game and her two tries in the only other game she played against McGill that season, another honour was brought upon Borsboom, when she received an RSEQ Second Team All-Star at the end of the match, recognizing her massive contributions to the team even in limited playing time.
When asked about what all the honour and awards she has gotten throughout the years mean and what ones she is still seeking, she said she would “love to be on a World Rugby dream team,” which would be “a dream.”
Clearly holding herself to high standards and being the ambitious player she is, Borsboom continued by saying the one thing she is aiming for — “player of the year would be amazing, it feels crazy even to say out loud.”
What’s next for Tylo Borsboom?
Borsboom is a spectacular player who stumbled onto the rugby field and then never stumbled again. She is a force to be reckoned with and masters the game with speed and talent, making her not only a leader but a groundbreaking athlete.
When asked what’s the plan now, she wants everyone to know that university is not the end of her career. She recognizes that Canada is number two in the world right now for rugby, and there is so much Canadian rugby talent, with three of them being named to the dream team this year.
There’s certainly precedent to a Gee-Gee playing on the Canadian national team, with Borsboom’s former teammate, Claire Gallagher, who already plays on the national team an inspiration.
She wants to make clear this is just the beginning as she is still keeping an eye on the ball, or in her words, “I would love to have an honour like that one day, and that’s kind of the dream that I am chasing now.”
