Queens University of Charlotte beat GRR's #1-ranked DIAA team Mary Washington 32-5 to cap off Senior Day and clinch the Chesapeake Conference championship Saturday.

The manner of the Queens victory was impressive. Yes UMW came very close to scoring more, but to hold the Mothers to five points when they had been averaging more than 60 before then is notable.

"I'm a defensive coach first off so I wanted to be sure we'd tightened up our defense going into this game," said Queens Head Coach Frank McKinney. "UMW has a backline that is just scary. [Coach] Hennie [Van Zyl] has done a great jon with them. I knew we had to improve on several aspects of play to beat them. One of those was defense."

Another was lineouts. While Queens has scrummed very well this season and continues to do so, they needed to have a better lineout. Against Mary Washington they stole four UMW throw-ins.

Queens University Rugby and Head Coach Frank McKinney, the first African-American Head Coach to win a national collegiate rugby championship, are featured in a film Scrum. Here's a look at the trailer.

Scrum promo trailer.mov from Square Zero Films on Vimeo.

Leading the way for Queens has to be the forward pack. They scored a try on a scrum drive, something that's pretty rare these days. They were hugely effective in tight and, as we noted, in the scrums and lineouts—the former a product of the work of coach Tyree Reed.

Hovering around the base of that pack is Hilton Olivier, who has been good at scrumhalf and even better as a goalkicker, leading the Chesapeake Conference with 111 points in only six games. And in that pack the back row of Prince-Louis Bush, Benji Hund, and freshman Juan Girelli.

"They tackle, they get us go-forward, they slow down opposition ball. They do all of that," enthused McKinney. And lock Tertius Dietrechsen, added the coach, "is just a workhorse."

Out in the backs, Campbell van Rooyen has been a try machine, while Tom Keay, the vice captain, moved from flyhalf to center and combined with van Rooyen to contain the UMW backline.

For Queens, then, it's the next step, and they could now be legitimately thinking about a championship. 

The way NCR is running the playoffs is that their top DI playoffs will include teams from Liberty, Rugby East, MARC, and Chesapeake. The top three from Chesapeake, Queens, Mary Washington, and Mount St. Mary's are in. Meanwhile, Virginian Tech (5th in the Chesapeake) will be tracked into the NCR DIAA playoff.

Below are the standings. Queens also won the Futures Cup, for younger players, going 6-0.