Fairfield Wins Third Straight 7s Tournament of the Summer
Fairfield Wins Third Straight 7s Tournament of the Summer
Fairfield Pegasi won their third straight summer 7s tournament, capping off a 15-game undefeated streak with a win at the New Haven 7s.
Fairfield brought in a deep squad to their final tournament of the summer season, with players from every grade level.
They started off the day with a 27-7 win against Midstate rugby, getting tries from Kevin Kirkland, Griffen O' Connell, Lucas Mayer, Anthony Desautels, and Vncernt Desautels. Fairfield built on that with a 42-0 shutout of Danbury—Josh Pastore, Jeff Andintori, Rowan Sierra, Matt Ryan, Kevin Splan, and Aidan Burns all touched down in that game.
The set up the final pool game with Fairfield against Stapes. Fairfield dominated possession in the first half and had plenty of scoring opportunities, but struggled to connect on them. Eventually Kevin Kirkland finally broke through and scored, but the conversion was missed. Just before halftime, Kevin Splan kicked a short 22-meter dropout to his prop Lucas Mayer, who gathered the ball raced 80 meters for the try. This gave Fairfield a 10-0 lead at the break. Staples would strike quickly off the second half kickoff, scoring a try and getting the conversion. The rest of half would go back and forth with both teams playing strong defense. Fairfield would strike one more time with a 90-meter run from O'Connell at flyhalf, who stepped his opposite number off the scrum and raced the length of the field to seal the game 17-7.
In the first semifinal, Fairfield played a combined Aspetuck/NY Raider team. The Aspetuck/NY team had been given teams fits all day by their aggressive style and smashmouth approach to 7s. Fairfield stuck to their game plan and moved the ball to space, easily beating Aspetuck/NY 52-0. Fairfield got tries from Andrew Reicher, Oliver Held, Pastore, Burns, Sierra, Splan, and Kirkland
In the other semifinal, Midstate edged Staples 15-10. Midstate jumped out to a quick lead and played tough defense to hold off the Staples team.
The final would match then be a rematch between Midstate and Fairfield. Midstate scored first with some great defensive pressure that pushed Fairfield back into their in-goal. This led to Midstate intercepting a pass and scoring and leading 5-0. It was the wakeup call for Fairfield. After receiving the ensuing restart, Kirkland scored and with the conversion Fairfield was up 7-5. Fairfield would get two more quick tries from Kirkland to take a 21-5 lead into halftime. From there it was all Fairfield; Pastore and then Desautels scored and the final was 35-5.
Fairfield players and coaches said the summer success was a complete team effort. Twenty different players contributed to the effort during the summer, and that allowed Fairfield to slot in players when they were key performers at each tournament and not lose anything. The players focused on what they were taught by Coach JT Smith — defense, communication, and getting the ball to space. Their defense held teams to only five tries in the last ten games.
Fairfield was also joined this summer by several players from the West Hartford Rugby Club. These players were a big part of the success of the team this summer.
Fairfield Roster: Corbin Smith, Lucas Mayer, Jeff Adintori, Kevin Splan, Josh Pastore, TJ Finegan, Jack Reidy, Paul Vanscoy, Matt Ryan, Anthony Desautels, Vincent Desautels, Aidan Burns, Sebastian Leon, Jackson Chudzik, Griffen O' Connell, Kevin Kirkland, Rowan Sierra, Alex Bottas, Oliver Held, and Andrew Reicher