East HS pulled off something of a shock result in beating Colorado Springs in the Rugby Colorado’s Boys DI semifinals Saturday.

The fact that East won wasn’t so much of a shocker, but the score - 55-15 - was. East Head Coach Bill Baer said the game went as expected for about 45 minutes or so, but then it got weird.

“It was a tough game as we expected,” said Baer. “We scored, then they scored, and we went back and forth.”

In fact, Colorado Springs led 17-10 with about 20 minutes to go. East would score to tie the game, and then from the restart, center Adam Leonard caught the ball and took off, powering through several Grizzlies tacklers to chug 60 meters for a try.

“That try got us going,” said Baer. “I don’t know exactly what switched on, but we just started to do a really good job taking care of the ball, and really started playing with confidence. Colorado Springs is a really good team, but we just started to play with a lot of energy. Whatever happened, I hope we can replicate it next week.”

The East defensive effort was led by No. 8 Sam Golla, with flanker Max Cohen playing well also, but in the end the story was about an explosion of nine tries in the final 20 minutes to turn what was a nailbiter into a rout.

In next week’s final, East will face Regis Jesuit, which had to work very hard for a 29-22 win over Aurora in the other semifinal.