In Singapore, where Joyce Lim grew up, touch rugby is very popular and very competitive. And since every high school student in the country has to choose one extracurricular sport, most end up playing it. Lim was one such student, but she didn’t fall for the game right away. “I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of it all,” she recalls.
Joyce Lim, OP Trust
Over time, though, she started to have fun. In particular, she liked how the best teams weren’t always the fastest. They were the smartest. No one player could run the ball from one end of the field to the other on her own. It took strategy — an entire team employing the right combination of running and passing — to win.
When Lim moved to Canada after high school, she found that almost no one played the sport. So she helped launch Touch Canada, a nationwide network of existing clubs and intramural leagues. (She’s the current president.)
Lim, a corporate lawyer at OPTrust, which manages one of the country’s largest pension funds, finds her work to be a lot like rugby: it’s all about strategy. Though she works long hours, she still finds time to play. During the summer, she’s on the field, for games and practices, three nights a week. Lim wishes more Canadians would join her. “Not many people know about touch rugby. But the rules are simple, so it’s easy to learn. And most people that try it end up absolutely loving it.”
This story is from our Winter 2017 Issue.
Photography by Daniel Ehrenworth; Makeup by Shawna Lee