College 7s Update
College 7s Update
College 7s is slowly working its way through the end of the cold weather.
Conferences sometimes have a series of tournaments, but sometimes also just have a championship. So it's up to teams to formulate a schedule that makes sense for them.
Meanwhile teams are looking to qualify for NCR's CRC championship at the end of April.
College 7s Tournaments For Winter/Spring 2023
Christendom have already booked a place back at the CRC, where they were runners-up in 2022. The Crusaders went 5-0 in their qualifier and beat VMI 22-10 in the final. It wasn't a steamrolling, however. They needed a last-minute try from Joseph Kokes to beat Richmond 15-14, and squeaked by Susquehanna 17-14.
Matthew Westin was a try-scoring force for Christendom, which will next take the field at the Mooseman 7s March 18.
Marian won their CRC qualifier last weekend, beating Iowa Central CC in the final.
Head Coach John Harley said his players just relaxed and played rugby, not worrying too much about mistakes.
"They really started to come together and they basically just let things go; they just played and moved on the next thing," Harley told GRR. Qualifying this early won't change Harley's approach, he added. "I hopefully got that communicated to the fellas; we need to continue to perform well to get a better seed when wer'e there."
Tommaso Lorenzetti was Marian's top scorer, finishing the the Big Rivers tournament as the co-top-try-scorer and also slotting the goals. Eric Reed joined Lorenzetti as the co-top-try-scorer.
Next up for the Big Rivers is a tournament in St. Louis on March 18.
In Men's DII IUP won the Pittsburgh Dome 7s, going 5-0, and then went 3-0 in the Clarion 7s. One of those wins was a forfeit, but the other seven victories have had a few close ones—their first against Slippery Rock and a game against Trine. But the defending CRC DII champs are building nicely despite being without arguably their best player in RJ Beach, who suffered a season-ending injury in the DII final in December.
Beach instead is serving as an assistant coach to Head Coach Seth Erwin and has been a very useful asset on the sideline. For his part, Erwin said that several freshmen have stepped into the fray and performed well.
"We also have some of our smaller forwards really embrace 7s."
Dom Holmes and Dylan McAnulty have been very effective, but Erwin adds that he hasn't had all of his front-line players available at the same time yet, so that's a scary prospect for their opponents.
D1
Queens impressed in their opener held at Southern Virginia. They won the tournament in fairly convincing fashion, beating Virginia Tech II 32-0, Dayton 37-0, Georgetown 32-21, South Carolina 24-7, and, in the final, Virginia Tech I 22-10.
See the whole tournament here:
Brown beat Kutztown 12-7 in the final of the Frostbite 7s Premier bracket two weeks ago. In the open division Babson and Rowan both looked solid, with Babson beating Rowan in the clash between the two.
Next up? This weekend is a little slow, but the week after will be a big one, with tournaments all over the nation. And ... in Bermuda. The Ariel Re 7s in Bermuda will include the Bermuda All Stars, Brown, Cornell, Harvard (two teams), Kutztown, Mystic Collegiates, Roaming Rebels, Rowan, Stony Brook, UConn, Maryland, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt.
This is a special event for all of those teams.
Also interesting will be the USC Invitational at the University of South Carolina which looks to be packed with solid teams.
