If you discounted the University of Vermont as a contender in the national playoff scene, you might have been a shade premature.

UVM did indeed open their New England Collegiate Rugby Conference season with a 17-8 loss to Coast Guard. But, in retrospect, that has turned out to be a not-so-bad result. Since that game, Coast Guard has remained undefeated, and so has Vermont, capping their 3-0 run with an emphatic 32-5 defeat of #28 Rhode Island.

“Once we lost that first game, we could have gone in one or two directions,” said UVM player Matt Cortigiani. “We could have complained and felt sorry for ourselves, or we could have focused on the reasons why we didn’t win and tried to correct them. We decided to concentrate on the reasons we didn’t win and try to get better.”

The UVM players realized that their skills were lacking, and they needed to get the ball wide faster and with fewer mistakes.

“We are usually smaller than our opposition, so we need to use our speed,” said Cortigiani. “But to do that we needed the skills.”

In addition, the Vermont players concluded that they lacked intensity, and they were half-hearted at the point of contact.

“It’s a testament to our club leadership that we’ve stepped it up since then,” said Cortigiani. 

The good news for Vermont is that the NECRC is a double round-robin league. So on October 17 the Catamounts will host Coast Guard in a return engagement with the league leaders.

“That will certainly be a red letter day for us,” said Cortigiani.