Life University looked dominant Friday and Saturday, winning all three pool games and scoring 107 to the opposition’s five points in the USA Rugby Women’s DI College 7s Championships.

Also going undefeated were Penn State and Lindenwood, but it was Life that seemed to explode onto the pitch at Wakemed Soccer Park in Cary, NC. 

In the quarterfinals, Life kept up the scoring and beat Virginia 41-5, while Lindenwood (17-5 over UC Davis thanks to some nice work from Davon Thomas, among others) won, and so did Penn State.

The Nittany Lions had to work for it against a pretty handy JMU squad led by Kayla Cook. Sophia Pyrz scored two tries for PSU, including the game-winner as time expired.

And finally Stanford, which was 2-1 thanks to a loss to Life, surprised Central Washington with better team play and exposing CWU’s iffy tackling to win 21-19 - Maya Thueuer scored the try that tied the game at the death, and Olivia Bernadel Huey hit the game-winning conversion.

But all have to be a little worried about the Life Running Eagles, who have been getting some additional work thanks to the men’s coaches in a fine example of a program working for the men’s and women’s team equally. 

Against Virginia, Kaitlyn Broughton scored off the opening kickoff, and then Kimberly Semiglia added the first of her two tries to make it a quick 14-0. Cynthia Kelly’s try, converted by Madison Ohmann, made it 21-0 before Virginia finally scored. 

But Life kept it up with two tries from N'Keiah Butler, Semiglia’s second, and then on from Whitney Wilson to win 41-5 and make the semis.

“I’m really pleased with the depth of our players,” said Life Head Coach Rosalind Chou. “There is no dropoff. I'm really happy with their discipline and ability to execute our game plan. We still need to do a better job of covering our space defensively and getting the assignments down. We've had a few lapses and need to tighten that up for tomorrow. The team is really in a good place mentally and we just have to keep that momentum going.”

So now Life faces Stanford on Sunday, a team they beat 26-5 in Saturday’s final pool game. Penn State faces Lindenwood in the other semi. Those games are at 8am and 8:20, Eastern Time, respectively.

Also on tap in the women’s DI, JMU plays Virginia (8:40) and CWU plays UC Davis (9am) for the Plate semis. Chico State plays North Carolina for the Bowl at 9:20.