Clearwater mother reflects on life-changing Argentina rugby tour | Barriere North Thompson Star

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(Natacha Pisarenko photo) 2/2 Swipe or click to see more Theron McLarty of the Kamloops Rugby Club’s junior boys team carries the ball in a rugby match in Argentina in spring 2025. (Natacha Pisarenko photo) From battles on the field to trips to the hospital, tours of expansive salt flats and treks through unfamiliar lands, a tour of Argentina was a transformative experience for a group of young North Thompson rugby players. The Kamloops Rugby Club’s junior boys team went on the adventure of a lifetime nearly a year ago to the day, in spring 2025, and with some time having passed, Clearwater parent Lennie McLaren has had time to reflect on how the experience has shaped her son and his rugby teammates. The Kamloops Rugby Club attracts athletes from all over to play on the junior boys team. Four Clearwater boys — Kallan McLarty, Theron McLarty, Kalan Priede and Serafeem Gontcharov — joined Barriere’s Richard Blanke on the team that flew to Buenos Aires last March for two and a half weeks of games and exploration. The idea for the tour came from club manager Alejandra Carroll, who is from Argentina and is known as “The Godmother” within the club. “She put this idea forward, and everyone ran with it,” McLaren said. Dozens of boys and their coaches went on the trip, and many of the parents came along for the journey. Before their plane even landed, the boys were hit with adversity. Twenty of the 44 players ended up getting food poisoning on the plane, including three of the four boys from Clearwater. When they landed, they went from -5 C in Canada to 35 C and humid weather in Buenos Aires, putting their bodies further through the ringer. The weather and the food poisoning understandably had an effect on their on-field performance in the early goings of the tour. “The ones that could play those first games were still pretty weak,” McLaren said. Her son, Kalan Priede, lost 15 pounds from the food poisoning and the heat. Their first two games were blowout losses, but as they got healthier their play became more competitive. “We did win some games over the time there,” McLaren said. More adversity struck when Priede suffered a concussion on a dirty play by an opponent during a game in Tucumán. He wound up going to hospital. McLaren had the ordeal of bringing her son to the hospital in a place where she didn’t speak the language and a health care system she was unfamiliar with. “It was scary because it wasn’t the richest area of Argentina, and it was kind of a dingy little hospital,” she said. Everything went fine, however, with help from Carroll and the team’s healthcare connection. Priede soon returned to the field. The boys did a lot of growing on the rugby field as players, but perhaps even more growing off the field as people. McLaren described the tour as a transformative experience for the young players, many of whom hadn’t been outside Canada before. “I think they sort of opened their eyes a lot, seeing a different way that people live compared to how much we have,” she said. She added her kid was never very keen on travelling, but since the tour there’s been a shift. He now wants to travel to Wales. Other boys on the club are now wanting to travel abroad and “see how people from different cultures actually live,” McLaren said. The team fundraised for two years in order to get to Argentina, instilling a club culture of hard work and gratitude. “They really make everything possible for kids — girls and boys,” McLaren said. For more information on the club, visit kamloopsrugby.com. 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