Try, Try Again: W. Ruggers Take a Tile

A ruck here.

A maul there.

And some low down, dirty scrums.

That's all it took for the Radcliffe Women's Rugby team to emerge victorious this weekend in the first annual Radcliffe Invitational at Soldiers Field. Radcliffe scrambled to the top of the six-team draw of schools including Brown, Middlebury, UMass-Amherst, Wellesley and Boston College.

The ruggers put away Brown 10-0 in the first game of the tournament relying--as it would all day--on the strength of its forwards.

"The forwards really did most of the work," sophomore scrum-half Patty Seo said.

For the first try (five-point goal) Radcliffe surged up the field to just within inches of the try-line. On an line-out (inbound play) by Radcliffe, forward Liz Sturges carried the ball in a dramatic leap over the line to bring the ball down into goal territory.

In second half action it was again a forward who turned up in the goal for a moment of glory. In a pile-up just inside the try-line area, junior Koma Gandy pounced on the ball to make good on Radcliffe's second and final score of the game.

Moving into the second round of play Radcliffe smote an ill-matched Middlebury squad, 29-0. This time it was the Radcliffe backs who scored at will--bringing in five goals and two conversion attempts.

"Basically Middlebury was new, young team," Seo said. "It wasn't a lot of competition for us."

In the final showdown, Radcliffe faced the gritty women of UMass-Amherst. Amherst emerged from an upset victory over Wellesley in the previous round of the tournament, but proved to be no match for the proved to be no match for the 'Cliffies. In a meeting of the two teams just three weeks ago, Radcliffe tromped UMass 35-15, and on Saturday, things again went as expected.

Amherst attempted to capitalize on the speed of its backs and wings but Radcliffe continually proved to be too much for the smaller Minutemen. And in inside play, Amherst's plight was futile. Radcliffe put on a show of power, winning virtually every scrum-down of the game--both Amherst's and Radcliffe's own put-ins. In line-out play it was again the Radcliffe forwards who managed to not only win its own put-ins, but also serve as spoiler for Amherst's attempted put-ins.

"It was great to see everyone pull together. We've been working hard at building this program and it's great to see some positive results," Seo said. "They were good wins."

In men's action...Harvard Men's Rugby entered into Beanpot action over the weekend and let all of Bean-town know that the Crimson is a force to be reckoned with.

The Crimson took on the Boston University in game one and quickly showed them to their kennel. The Terriers were trounced by Harvard 49-0 in a matchup last fall between the two teams; the winter apparently did not help BU's cause, as Harvard dominated Saturday's game from beginning to end and walked away with a 39-3 victory.

The Crimson engaged in a tighter matchup with BC in game two. The Eagles attempted to fight off the Crimson barrage of quick hacks, but was unsuccessful in the first half as the Crimson went ahead 15-0.

However, the Eagles found a new offensive wind in the second half and turned the game into a taut, 15-14 showdown. But the game turned on a blundered BC penalty with seven minutes to play in the game, and the Crimson held one-point win and the championship.