Women's Rugby Dominates Princeton in First Round of Ivy League Tournament

The Harvard women’s rugby team recorded its second straight shutout and its third of the season in Saturday’s Ivy League Tier 1 semi-final match against Princeton. The Crimson (6-1, 4-1 Ivy) handily took care of the visiting Tigers (3-3, 2-3) by a score of 55-0 to advance to next week’s conference finale.

The Harvard squad came focused and prepared to make a statement in its first playoff match, as evidenced by the Crimson’s passionate yet composed play.

“We were really ready to play,” senior Claire Collins said. “The intensity was really high and we maintained a high level of [it] throughout the match.”

Freshman Emily Prentice also chimed in on her team’s high-stakes playoff mindset: “Our focus was playing to our full potential,” she said, “and so we were able to not get in our own heads about what this game was or who the other team was.”

With the decisive victory, Harvard extended its win streak to three matches while remaining a perfect 3-0 at home this season. Princeton, on the other hand, drops below .500 in Ancient Eight competition and moves to 3-3 for the year.

“[The match was] the coming together of a lot of the aspects we’ve been working on throughout our season,” Prentice said. “We had a really intense offensive focus, but defensively we shut [Princeton] out which is huge.”

Having clinched home field advantage for the entirety of the Ivy League playoffs, the Crimson put on another impressive show at the recently renovated Mignone Field. A total of eight Harvard players tallied on the score sheet, with Collins, Prentice, and freshman Delia Hellander each contributing a pair of tries.

“Everyone really got involved in the game,” Collins acknowledged, “and everyone was stepping up. When there was space in front of them, everyone was aggressive…and that meant that lots of people were scoring tries.”

After a Prentice try started the scoring for the Crimson, the home team’s intensity never wavered. Collins, recording back-to-back tries in the first half, did her damage to the Princeton defense shortly thereafter. A score from freshman Cydnee Colpaert concluded the Crimson’s early barrage of tries, and by the end of the first half, Harvard had skewed the match by a lopsided 25-0 score.

The second frame opened with close to 20 minutes of close, hard-fought rugby, resulting in no scoring from either side. Nevertheless, the Crimson found a second wind and rattled off six tries to boost its advantage to an unmatchable 55 points.

“On attack, we were well aligned,” Collins said. “There were always people ready for the pass, and the people catching the ball were really exploding onto [it]…which meant that we were able to stay on the front foot.”

Keeping a heavy foot on the offensive pedal was crucial to Harvard’s blanking of the Tigers. The Crimson’s stingy and physical defense, however, cannot be overlooked as a major theme of the match. Some players cited a strong scrum and dominating possession as key factors in the success of Saturday’s match.

“Honestly, [the Tigers] can’t score when they don’t have the ball, and so we were really adamant about keeping possession,” Collins said. “Rugby’s not like football – [changing possession] is not automatic – so we had to work hard every time there was a tackle to make sure we maintained possession.”