Wheeling University defeated Southern Nazarene 58-17 Saturday to win the NCR Women's D1 championship.
As mentioned on GRR earlier—A New Landscape Heralded In NCR Women D1 Final—this is the culmination of some changes in NCR Women D1, with two school-supported teams in the final. Notre Dame College, another school-supported team, made the final the last two years but it was a club team, Michigan, which had come away with the trophy.
Wheeling is a brand-new program that benefited from a strong recruiting effort from Head Coach Ken Pape (who is a big fan of the Next Phase Rugby recruiting app) and also from the fact that several players transferred from Pape's old program, Lander, to Wheeling.
This allowed Pape to field not only a talented side, but one that was more experienced that you might expect for a brand-new team.
The result was a series of dominiant wins and a 12-0 record.
In the final, six different Cardinals scored.
Bella Gullatta opened the scoring with a long-range penalty goal, and then skipper Alexis Dallas blazed through tacklers to touch down. Gullatta converted to make it 10-0. Joelle Taylor scored off a tap penalty, and right after the restart the Cardinals sent it wide through Abbi Siller and Liz Sinatra to set up Alli Davis in space. Gullatta converted and added a penalty before SNU was able to answer with some impressive running to score twice.
Still Wheeling led 24-12 at halftime and expanded their lead after the break.
Turnover ball . Davis took it the rest of the way and touched the ball down before Gullatta redeemed herself with the conversion kick to make it a 24-0 Cardinal lead. Southern Nazarene's high-powered offense would get going themselves, scoring two tries over the final 20 minutes to get to within two scores of the Cardinals. The team went into the locker room with Wheeling holding a 24-12 lead and looking to extend that into the second half.
Nine minutes into the second half, the Cardinal's defense would create the opportunity, forcing a Storm turnover. Tocarra Nelson set up Tamzin Boyce, who exploded for a long run and try. Jemmley Rivera added a try about 13 minutes later and it was now 38-10.
The speedy Boyce would score her second try of the day in the 56th minute, and then Gullatta kicked to space and chased the ball down. SNU answered with a try but now it was 55-17.
In the final minutes Abbi Siller got her team close to the try line and Rivera picked and powered over for the last try of the day. Marissa Hudson finished the game with a penalty goal and Wheeling had won 58-17. The final score was very close to Wheeling's average game score of 54-8. It's worth noting that as dominant as the Cardinals were, they did encounter more trouble in the playoffs, giving up 63 of their 101 points conceded in the three playoff rounds. Spare a thought for Virginia, which lost their quarterfinal match to Wheeling 31-27, easily the closest match Wheeling played all season.
Gullatta led the Cardinals with 18 points on the night. Boyce and Rivera each notched two tries. This was the third multi-try game of the season for Boyce.
