The men’s and women’s rugby teams hosted Ivy League championship matches this past weekend. While the previously undefeated women lost their first match of the year, the men won the North Division 7s tournament. The team will now travel to Princeton, N.J., for Ivy championships next weekend.
“We kind of just dominated every game,” Tyler Moragne ’14 said. “Some of the teams had some decent athletes, but we were better rounded. We had better physicality and speed.”
Over the weekend, both men’s teams went undefeated, besting opponents from Harvard University, Yale University and Brown University, before beating the Bears in the final.
The wins keep the Big Green’s undefeated fall season alive as they head into the League championships next weekend.
“We maintained ball for most of the games, and that was a big part of us winning,” Zack Fowler ’15 said.
The first stage of the tournament was a round robin, in which the Big Green played each team once. In the opener, the Dartmouth men defeated Harvard 31-0, thanks to an early scoring spree. When the team played Brown for the first time Saturday, they defeated the Bears 29-0. In the final game of the opening round, the Big Green trounced Yale 40-0.
In the final against the Bears, Dartmouth coasted to a similar 31-0 victory. Dawit Workie ’17 got the scoring started with an end-to-end rush and try in the first minute. Moments later, he broke out on another 85-yard run, then shoveled the ball off to Kevin Clark ’14 for the try. Captain Madison Hughes ’15 capped off a six-try weekend with two full-field runs.
The second team fared similarly well, also winning all four of their matches. They opened the day with a win over Yale 10-0, before defeating Harvard and Brown by a combined 80-0. In the second tier final, the Big Green dominated the Bulldogs, running away with a 40-0 win.
“If we end up winning this weekend, we’re up for nationals, which will be in Greensboro, [N.C.] during finals, the 23-24,” Fowler said.
The women suffered their season’s first loss against Harvard University last weekend, losing to the Crimson 29-0 in the Harvard team’s inaugural season.
The women were able to take possession on Harvard’s 40 at the beginning of the first half, but did not succeed in gaining a substantial amount of ground. Multiple penalties by the Big Green women helped Harvard score their first try, and though Dartmouth came within five meters of the try line, the women were unable to complete and gave the Crimson a 12-0 advantage at halftime.
Green zone attacks and tries by the Crimson in the second half helped the Harvard team maintain their lead, while the Crimson’s offense kept the Big Green women scoreless.
The win led the Harvard women to their first-ever Ivy championship title.
“It was amazing when that final whistle went today,” co-captain Xanni Brown told the Harvard Crimson. “To look back at where we were in August and where this Harvard Radcliffe team has gone to now is just amazing.”
The Dartmouth women will be back in action at the American College Rugby Association tournament, hosted by Army at West Point Military Academy in two weeks.
Staff writer Macy Ferguson contributed reporting.
