New varsity team Life University banked three wins last weekend, playing Atlanta-area DI and DII teams in a round robin, shortened match format.

First up was Georgia Tech, which provided the toughest competition. Two tries from Deshel Ferguson, and one apiece from N’Keiah Butler and Argentina’s Karen Faget, helped the Running Eagles to a 22-10 win.

“Georgia Tech is a great team, and we expected it to be a very challenging game,” Life coach Ros Chou said. “They have several returning players from their team that made 7s and 15s playoffs last year. They put us under a lot of defensive pressure forcing turnovers and were very strong in the set pieces.

“We are happy to have such good competition locally,” Chou added. “I hope that both teams can take advantage of the close proximity to help prepare each other for the competitive spring 15s season.”

The games were 20-minute halves, and Life’s remaining 80 minutes belonged to them alone. Life blanked Georgia and host Emory 71-0 and 70-0, respectively. Between the two games, Nicole Strasko, Gabi Benjamin and (leading weekend try-scorer) Faget scored three tries each; Madison Ohmann, Christina Swift, Darian Lovelace, Kimberly Semiglia and Ferguson dotted down twice; and Marissa Hols and Butler added one try apiece.

“Overall, I'd say the entire team is starting to trust the system as well as each other, so we can see improvement throughout the squad,” Chou said. “Wing Deshel Ferguson and number 8 Nicole Strasko are strong offensively, as well effective defenders. The whole team is putting in hard work and we hope to use each match to improve.”

Life takes a break this Saturday and begins its home-and-away series against Eastern Illinois, which are 0-2 thus far, next weekend.