AIC broke the Brown streak this past weekend, claiming the Women’s Premier bracket at NCR’s CRC 7s.
While there was the CRAA 7s in Indianapolis with many NIRA teams in attendance, this tournament, too, had NIRA teams, and the programs will daily training environments certainly had an advantage. In Round 1 of the Premier bracket, there were six games between a NIRA team and a non-NIRA team, one game involving two NIRA teams, and one involving two NCR teams.
In those six NIRA-vs-non-NIRA matches, NIRA went 6-0. Obviously a NIRA team won the all-NIRA match, and in the all-NCR match it was the more experienced DTE program, Southern Nazarene, over Aquinas.
And a quick glance showed a clear difference. Almost all first-round games were convincing victories. AIC won 42-0. Long Island beat Maris 38-5. Brown beat UConn 38-0. The only close game was West Chester holding off Wheeling 12-7.
The second row wasn’t all that different. Brown won by shutout again. Navy beat Queens 21-5, and SNU beat Long Island to record the first non-NIRA win over a NIRA opponent. AIC cruised past New Haven by a lot.
That brought us to the crux of the competition. The semifinals saw Browns vs Navy and AIC vs SNU. Once again Brown pitched a shutout, 24-0 over the Midshipmen, and AIC beat SNU 31-12.
Unscored-upon so far, Brown looked formidable.
“During the spring we had scrimmaged with Dartmouth and West Point,” said AIC DOR Jamison Bonti. “We spent a lot of time this spring not just focused on trying to compete at the DII level and be happy there, but looking at how we are moving up to DI this fall and we needed to take the hard route.
“As a result we knew our record was not going to be as clean, but could we grow from the experience? We competed well with Dartmouth and with West Point. But just as important was the team aspect. The first hour of our session at West Point was team-building activities. The final hour with Dartmouth was team-building. My big belief is that we need to build and strengthen the women’s rugby community.”
The team-building and embracing challenges worked. AIC was putting up big scores because they were executing.
“My favorite stat was that we led the tournament in the number of players who scored tries,” said Bonti. “We had 11 players score tries.”
They didn’t rely on just one or two finishers.
“That was a massive indicator of who we are and out method to success,” Bonti added.
In the final, Brown’s clean scoresheet was inked up in the first minute when Morgan Schechter cut around the outside and went about 80 meters to score under the posts. Shaken, Brown didn’t fold and responded with a try from Olivia Baptiste. It was tied 7-7 and all to play for in the second half.
But AIC had an ace up their sleeve in the person of SaTya Miller.
“Everyone needs that player who can come on and alter the game, and that was SaTya,” said Bonti. “She was our Energizer Bunny. And when she came on she completely changed the game.”
With Schechter running the attack smartly at scrumhalf, and with Dodd and Kayana Edwards testing the defenses, Brown had to scramble. Miller scored the go-ahead try, outpacing her chasers, and Dodd cut through for a long-range score. Now it was 19-7. Brown had time to come back, but not much. In the end, it was Miller who sealed it with her second.
AIC showed they can compete against DI teams, and really they played some good 7s rugby. They also have talent. Edwards was brilliant as a defender and as a playmaker, but they had more than that.
