Since our last – and first – Women’s College 7s Top 20 ranking, two events have occurred: USA Rugby’s College 7s Championship and the CRC 7s invitational. Those results obviously influenced the reorder of the rankings, but a few judgment calls were invoked that go against some place finishes.

The question became: Did either of the tournament runners-ups (Central Washington in Denver, Lindenwood at Chester, Pa.) look better than the ACRA teams, which dedicated the majority of their springs to 7s play? Considering that ACRA’s and USA Rugby’s championships were live-streamed, and we can gauge what these teams looked like at their peak, we feel confident that Army’s and Norwich’s final product looked slightly better. We still think Central Washington has the cast for a fantastic 7s team, but they played about even with Princeton (26-19 W) and UVA (12-10 W), and dropped a 47-26 contest to Penn State in the USA Rugby final.

The Nittany Lions served as a good measuring stick when sorting out the top 10, and the most influential game occurred against Stanford. The Cardinal won the USA Rugby Plate, but contested the best game against PSU during the tournament – going up 12-0 at half and forcing a big response from Penn State in the second stanza. Yes, UVA beat Stanford 22-12 during pool play, and we’re not discounting that victory; we were just more impressed with the Cardinal’s showing against Penn State.

Lindenwood is also a tricky team. The Lady Lions finished 7^th in Denver – losing to Princeton and Stanford – before rebounding with a second-place finish at the CRCs the following weekend. Why is Lindenwood ranked about Princeton? In Denver, the Missouri team got into a habit of digging itself a hole and having to rally in the second half, which is what happened in the losses to the Tigers and Cardinal. A week later, the Lady Lions were still a little slow from the start, falling behind both AIC and Notre Dame College at the half, but this time around, the team rallied to two wins. We do think Lindenwood learned a lot from the USA Rugby championship and was a better team when it played at the CRCs. They made Penn State sweat in the second half of the CRC final, making it 12-7 with a few minutes remaining.

The rest of the lineup shakes out a little easier. We feel for Life, which ended up winning the Plate at the CRCs, but had the goods to play in the Cup bracket. In the Running Eagles’ first game of 7s ever, Life lost 19-12 to Notre Dame College, and that result essentially relegated Life to the Plate competition. From that seven-point loss onward, Life went 5-0 and outscored opponents 143-15.

The only other note is Winona. The Black Katts have only played in one tournament thus far, but won it so aggressively that they’re staying on the list. Additionally, they’re one of the few teams that is continuing to play as a college side during the summer, and have two tournaments lined up for June.