Men's rugby caps season with two cup wins, women's rugby books places at Nationals

This past weekend, the men’s and women’s rugby teams competed in the Ivy League Women’s Seven-a-Side Championship and the Rickerson Cup, respectively. Both teams have had extremely good seasons and were looking for a convincing and memorable end to the season as they headed into their respective competitions.

Women’s Rugby

In a culmination of continued success and effort, the women’s rugby team was awarded one of the 16 places at the USA Rugby Collegiate National Sevens Championship. The team will travel to Denver, Colo. to compete at the University of Denver over Memorial Day weekend and face off against the country’s finest rugby teams.

Against more familiar foes in West Windsor this past weekend, the Tigers showed their domination over their Ivy League opponents. It is notable that the Tigers are a club team, whereas Brown, Harvard and Dartmouth are all varsity-level teams and funded by the universities themselves. Princeton easily cruised past Brown and Cornell in the group stages and then disposed of Harvard in the semi-finals before once again facing Brown in the final.

In a tightly contested game, the Tigers raced out to an early lead and stifled the Brown offense until midway in the second half. At that stage, the Tigers were already up 22-0 and even though Brown closed out the game by scoring 15 straight points, the Tigers’ initial lead was too large. The game finished 22-15 and the Tigers lifted an ever-important trophy. With an impressive tournament, freshman Jessica Lu was named Player of the Tournament.

The tournament bodes well for the Tigers’ future, as five of the starting seven players in the team are freshmen and only one is a senior. After the game, senior co-captain Stephanie Kim spoke about the developmental period for these freshman players.“We have a very young team this yearandwe spent the fall season developing the younger players’ skills because most of them had never played rugby before coming to Princeton. We tried to focus on making sure they understood the rules and, more importantly, how to be team players and what it means to play for PUWRFC,” she said.

Senior co-captain Catherine Lambert echoed Kim’s sentiments. “After an unsatisfying end to our fall season, we set more ambitious goals for the spring, playing against a higher level of competition, particularly during our tour in Trinidad over spring break, where we played the national women’s select side both in 15s and 7s,” she said.

In order to prepare for the upcoming tournament, Lambert added, “In the coming weeks, we will focus on improving our fitness and defensive skills. 7s is an incredibly fast-paced and exciting game, but it's also unforgiving — one missed tackle or pass can lead to an opposition try.”

However, regardless of the results at Nationals, the women’s rugby team can look back proudly at a greatly successful season and look forward to the future with great hope. “They will carry on the tradition and team spirit we as seniors have worked hard to promote,” Kim said.

Men’s Rugby

After an unprecedented season last year where the team booked its place in the Nationals before losing out to West Virginia, the team entered the season confidently but was unable to repeat the successes of last season. The team was beaten in the Ivy League Championships by host Brown, who lost to eventual winner Yale.

Although their Nationals hopes were dashed, the Tigers bounced back admirably in their two recent cup tournaments, the Koranda Cup and the Rickerson Cup. The Koranda Cup was created in the memory of Rob Koranda, who tragically died in a balcony collapse in Chicago in 2003 and features a winner-takes-all matchup against Ivy League Champions Yale. The Rickerson Cup, the New Jersey State Championships, has brought much success for the Tigers in the past few years, with the Tigers having won the trophy every year since 2009.

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The Tigers prepared for their spring season by going on tour to the sunny islands of the Bahamas.“Tour was great — a few of our rookies, Jake Levin and Mark Tamakloe in particular, immersed themselves in the local Bahamian grind and reaped benefits on and off the field. [Senior] Will Hicks showed and embraced maturity beyond his years on tour and throughout the season,” said junior fly-half Michael Rice.

The Tigers successfully defended the Koranda Cup by defeating Yale in New Haven, showing that the Tigers are still one of the best teams in the Ivy League before coming home and easily dispatching Seton Hall at the Rickerson Cup to the tune of a 80-5 thrashing.

Rice said he was happy with the team’s efforts this season. “Overall the spring season was pretty successful for the club.We went down in a tough game to Brown in the Ivy playoffs but apart from that were undefeated. Credit must also go to our two Australian varsity recruits, [senior] Myles McGinley and [freshman] Ben Schafer, who have made a huge difference this semester,” he said.

And although the team will be losing two vital players in seniors Will Hicks and Nick Martin, Rice added he is confident that the team is capable of continuing on next season. “The freshman class this year is particularly strong, and I think we could be building towards something big next year,” he said.