'All I have to do is play rugby': what helped Kennedi Stevenson step up to the Series

“All I have to do is play rugby.”

That statement just about sums up Kennedi Stevenson’s approach to her HSBC SVNS Series debut.

Across those first four days of competition for Canada in Dubai and Cape Town the youngster looked at home competing against established stars of the game.

Two tries in her debut tournament in the UAE were shortly followed by four more in South Africa. Such comfort is rare for rookie players, but has made Stevenson a key player to watch across the remainder of the 2025/26 campaign.

“I remember going into it thinking, this is just rugby,” Stevenson told RugbyPass. “I know how to play rugby. It was where I wanted to be. I trusted my teammates and I was just trying to calm myself.

“I know when I’m calm, I play better and play to my ability. I think it was just having the mindset of knowing I could do it. They selected me for a reason. Just having positive thoughts in my head I thought was really helpful.”

This promotion to Jocelyn Barrieau’s senior side was a sudden one for Stevenson. But it was not like her talent had not been noted since she first took up rugby in Grade 10 (aged 15-16).

In her second year at Queen’s University and less than two years from her high school graduation, Stevenson has played Under-20s rugby for Canada in the 15-a-side game and powered her country to a bronze medal at the Junior Pan American Games last summer in Paraguay.

In that tournament in South America, Stevenson scored five tries and got to display plenty of her potential on the training field in a series of camps with the senior women’s team.

In the weeks after she got back to Ontario, Stevenson registered 10 tries for Queen’s Women’s Rugby, helped her university side win the OUA Championship, named a U SPORTS Second Team All-Canadian and a OUA First Team All-Star. All that to double down on her OUA and U SPORTS Rookie of the Year awards in 2024.

Such form undoubtedly went a long way to the starlet making her HSBC SVNS Series debut in November.

“In the summer I was in Paraguay for the Pan Am Games, I trained a whole bunch with them (Canada’s senior women’s side) in the summer and thought that was it,” Stevenson said.

“I wasn’t really thinking I was going to the Series. I was just training and getting experience. Then I got the call and I was in shock. I had school. I was so excited to just focus on this. I have always wanted to play on the Series.

“The goal, one day, is to go to the Olympics. I thought maybe in the next couple of years it could slowly start to happen. Now it is happening a lot sooner than I thought.

“It was such a cool experience. I was super nervous. You don’t want to mess it up. It was just like; when in doubt, play rugby. That was the main thing trying to calm myself down.”

Stevenson, clearly, does not hide from her ambition of playing at an Olympic Games.

Two summers ago, she watched with her family in Ontario as the team led by Jack Hanratty stood with silver medals around their necks on the podium alongside New Zealand and the USA at the Stade de France.

 

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Almost as if she has blinked, the dynamic runner has staked an early claim to be part of the team that will make a much shorter journey to Los Angeles in 2028.

“When I was six years old, I did gymnastics and my goal was always to go to the Olympics,” Stevenson said. “Now I’m here and I’m much closer. Those aspirations have just got stronger and stronger. I need to really fight, because I really want to go to the Olympics at one point in my life.”

Stevenson credits the Canada Women’s Sevens squad with her comfort stepping onto the HSBC SVNS Series.

It has no great secret that the team are close. The culture initiated by Rugby Canada Women’s Director of Rugby, Kévin Rouet, has not only allowed players to move freely between rugby sevens and the 15-a-side game, but helped foster talent into senior women’s squads more easily.

“We had a camp a couple of weeks before (Dubai and Cape Town) and everyone was super sweet and super welcoming,” Stevenson said.

“They would come over to me, introduce themselves and not once did I feel like the youngest or one of the new players.

 

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“They’re just super awesome people that are like, you’ve got this. Always encouraging. Especially first coming on, not feeling scared.”

Competing on the Series was also a dream. Because, alongside her Olympic ambitions, Stevenson had watched the Series since virtually the first minute she picked up a rugby ball.

Years had been spent watching the likes of Charlotte Caslick, Portia Woodman-Wickliffe, Maddison Levi and Michaela Brake (née Blyde) shredding it on rugby fields across the world.

“I would always watch the SVNS Series, I’d watch Australia, New Zealand and I’d look at Portia Woodman and I wanted to do that one day,” Stevenson said.

“I wanted to play for Canada and play against those people. I remember talking to a couple of girls on my team and they said we were in the same hotel as everyone.

“I remember going in the elevator a couple of times and Jorja Miller was there or Maddi Levi. It was just insane. I had to stay calm and be chilled about it. It was just so cool.”

Stevenson and her teammates will have been in Singapore for just shy of two weeks after flying over early to acclimatise to the humid conditions.

The squad named by Jocelyn Barrieau for their trip to Asia and then Perth contains numerous returning faces. They have been named in Pool B with France, Great Britain and New Zealand, the side are seventh overall after back-to-back sixth-place finished in the first two legs.

Women’s Rugby World Cup stars Olivia Apps, Fancy Bermudez, Alysha Corrigan, Taylor Perry and Gabrielle Senft are all making their first HSBC SVNS Series appearances of 2025/26.

Apps, Bermudez, Corrigan and Perry are all veterans of the nation’s 2024 Olympic Games success, another great source of excitement for Stevenson ahead of her third outing on the Series as the North Americans look for a first podium finish of the season.

“Once I found out who else is going and I saw that some of the girls from overseas were coming back, who had played at the Olympics, I was like; oh my goodness,” Stevenson said.

“I watched them play at the Olympics. I was fangirling. Now I get to play with them. Learn from them. I was just super excited to be a part of it. I was just super excited to be a part of it.”