The men’s and women’s rugby teams seem to have forgotten how to lose. Both teams tackled, ran and kicked their way to undefeated records, putting on spectacular performances wherever they travel. This weekend, they hope to continue their stellar seasons in two different tournaments. The men will compete in the North Ivy Sevens Championship, while the women will compete in the Ivy Fifteens championships, which will both be staged at the Corey Ford rugby clubhouse in Hanover.
In the North Ivy Sevens championship, the Dartmouth men will face Brown University, Harvard University and Yale University. Each team will field an A-side and a B-side.
The championship is an opportunity for all of the schools to jockey for seeding in the Ivy Sevens championship next weekend, where the top finisher will receive automatic qualification to the National Sevens championship in Greensboro, N.C., where Dartmouth was the Ivy League champion last year.
While the team has been dominant this season, players know there are still significant challenges in store this weekend. Captain Madison Hughes ’15 said the players are staying humble going into the tournament.
“We had a really successful fall season, but we don’t take anything for granted,” he said. “We know we’re going to have to work hard.”
This will be one of the team’s first experiences with sevens this season, which Hughes noted is somewhat unlike fifteens. Dartmouth’s first sevens matches were last weekend at Yale. In sevens the game is much more fast-paced and momentum can change quickly, and players must adapt faster and have a broader skill set.
“Sevens is a completely different game: there’s much more of an emphasis on cardiovascular fitness, there’s a lot more running,” Hughes said. “Everyone has to be available to fill in any position at any time just because of the way the game flows. It’s much faster — you don’t have time for everyone to worry about their set positions.”
Though Dartmouth blew out Brown, Harvard and Yale in fifteens this season, the short timespan of a sevens match means that any of them could gain an edge very quickly. Coach Gavin Hickie believes that both Brown and Harvard can hang with the Big Green.
“Brown beat our development side last weekend in New Haven, and between them and Harvard they’re going to pose a threat,” he said. “But we play anywhere, any time and we’re excited to have some teams up here this weekend.”
Unlike the men, the women’s team will not have to deal with a change of format in their Ivy Fifteens championship. They are seeded No. 1, and will play fourth-seed Princeton University on Saturday. If they win that match, they will move to play the winner of the Harvard-Brown match.
Though the margins of victory for the women’s team this season have not always been huge, captain Pallavi Kuppa-Apte ’14 said the team is going into the tournament with confidence it they can maintain its streak.
“We haven’t had a very high-scoring season against the teams that we’re going to be playing this weekend, but we did play a very strong defensive game against all of them,” she said. “We’re confident that we’re going to play an even stronger defensive game, and hopefully run up the score a little more.”
Kuppa-Apte added that the team has yet to reach its offensive potential.
“One of our biggest strengths is that we have some really great runners on the team — offensively, we have some really nice aggression,” she said. “We’re hoping to capitalize on our offense more than we were able to this season, and have a higher-scoring game.”
If the team finishes in the top three this weekend, they will secure a spot in the national championship.
“The team has worked really, really hard this season, and it’s been a perfect combination of the people we have on the team and how hard we’ve been working over the past few years,” Kuppa-Apte said. “It’s really coming to a head right now. We want to secure some big wins this weekend.”
