Pendleton For 4-0 in Tennessee
Pendleton For 4-0 in Tennessee
Indiana's Pendleton swept their games at the President's Cup tournament in Tennessee over the weekend.
Father Ryan, 901, and Raptors Rugby from Tennessee along with St. Xavier HS from Ohio and Pendleton from Indiana convened on Knoxville, Tenn. to play shortened games against each other.
For Pendleton, their closest game was against Raptors. It was a bit of a weird game in that Pendleton had the ball for a good amount of the game but couldn't get points out of it. They spent the first eight minutes of the game in the Raptor 22 and finally opted for a Nick Trout penalty goal. Raptors came right back and powered over for a well-taken try about a minute later.
The ball remained in the Raptors 22 for virtually the entirety of the rest of the first half, and yet the Raptors defense yielded no points.
"Our decisions around the breakdown and in their 22 when we were close to scoring needed improvement, for both the team and the coaches," said Pendleton Head Coach Curtis Trout. "We should have taken the points and normally we do that but we kept opting to go for tries on a penalty."
Midway through the second half Zane Davis picked up close to the tryline and powered through four defenders to score what would be the game-winner.
"The team was persistent," said Coach Trout. "It was nice to have a game where we didn’t play well and the other team played well and we were able to win."
Pendleton added to that wins over Father Ryan (50-0), 901 (41-7), and St. Xavier (22-0). Weekends like this can be valuable learning eperiences, but they are also stresses on a team's depth. St. Xavier was on that position by the end of the weekend and so their loss to Pendleton was called early as a result.
Pendleton came with a big squad and their B side went 2-1.
"We've got a ton of returners but we've had to move guys around," said Trout. "So while we’ve worked a ton on skill and on defense and attack pattern, we haven’t settled on the starting lineup. So we worked on that this weekend and Sunday went a little smoother as a result."
Nick Trout was very effective from fullback and as a goalkicker. Garrett Pederson played blindside flanker and hooker and elsewhere.
"He was there wherever we needed him," said Coach Trout.
Center Elijah Pimental was also very good and worked well with flyhalf Reese Reddington, who set up his runners well.
