In its first spring season dedicated solely to sevens, the women’s club rugby team turned in a dominating performance to win the Ivy League Championships on Saturday in New Jersey. The team defeated Princeton University in the final by a score of 34 to 7. With the win, the Big Green advanced and will compete in the American Collegiate Rugby Association’s women’s small college national sevens tournament May 3-4 in Michigan.
Over the course of four games against Ivy League foes, the Big Green outscored its opponents by a combined score of 89-41. The Big Green failed to win just one match — a 17-17 draw with Yale University.
“It felt like the culmination of a month of work,” Leandra Barrett ’15 said. “This is our first season that we’ve just played sevens and not 15s in the spring, and everything started to click.”
The Big Green started the tournament slowly against the Bulldogs in the first game of pool play. Despite strong performances from Yejadai Dunn ’16 and Barrett, the Big Green could not prevent Yale from putting points on the board, walking with a tie. After taking a 12-0 lead, the Big Green gave up 17 unanswered to the Bulldogs before scoring in the final minute to tie the game. Dunn, Barrett and co-captain Diana Wise ’15 scored the three tries for the Big Green in the game.
“In the first game we were still getting our bearings,” Barrett said. “It wasn’t that we weren’t prepared, it was just that not all of our engines were firing.”
The Big Green showed its defensive prowess in its next game — a hard-fought 7-5 win over Princeton. In a match that featured only two tries, the Big Green secured the number one spot in its pool and advanced on to the semi-finals. Peety Kaur ’15 scored the only try of the game for the Big Green, scooping up a pass from Michaela Conway ’15 and turning the corner, before diving across the line under the posts. Conway converted the try to put the Big Green up 7-0.
Princeton crossed the try line in the second half, but failed to convert, giving the Big Green the win.
As pool play drew to a close, the Big Green knew exactly what improvements would be needed to suceed in the knockout rounds, co-captain Allison Brouckman ’15 said.
“If we could keep possession of the ball, we would win,” she said. “And we really, really turned it up for the last two games.”
Thanks to tournament scheduling, the Big Green received a break between pool and knockout play that its semi-final opponents, the University of Pennsylvania, did not. Stepping on to the pitch just 20 minutes after the conclusion of pool play, Penn struggled to match the Big Green’s fitness, which Brouckman said boosted the squad throughout the tournament.
“This year, our fitness at the end of the day was really good compared to other teams,” Brouckman said. “We were really able to turn up the steam and the aggression.”
Penn scored first, then Wise took over the game. The junior scored back-to-back tries, including one off the resulting Penn kickoff to negate any momentum the Quakers had built. Tries by Audrey Perez ’17, Kaur, Tatjana Toeldte ’16 and Dunn, as well as a 3-6 day on conversions by Conway allowed the Big Green to pull away from the Quakers for a 31-12 victory.
The victory set up a rematch with Princeton for the Ivy League title. Because the Big Green had seen the Tigers before, the squad had a clear match plan, Barrett said.
“In the first Princeton game, it was really low scoring, and part of that was just that we kept the ball,” she said. “That’s what we wanted to do in the second game as well.”
This same strategy led to an offensive explosion for the Big Green in the final, thanks to a dominating performance by Perez, the tournament’s most valuable player. With strong support from her teammates, Perez notched the first three tries of the game, two of which Conway converted to give the Big Green the 19-0 lead at the half.
“Audrey definitely stepped it up for the last game,” Brouckman said. “We would work as a team to get wide, and then she would just go. It was the nail in the coffin for Princeton.”
Barrett, Wise and Becky Marder ’15 all contributed tries in the second half, and the Big Green cruised to the 34-7 victory. Princeton’s only points came on a quick-tap penalty when the score was 24-0 Dartmouth.
The Big Green looks forward to its first shot at a national sevens title. Traveling to Michigan next weekend, the Big Green will face the United States Air Force Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy and Iowa State University in pool play. If successful, the Big Green will face either the University of Minnesota, Rutgers University, Lindenwood University or reigning champion Norwich University in the knockout rounds, depending on results from that pool.
Wise said that the team has been improving each week of the spring season and is hoping that this upward trend continues in the national tournament.
