Trine University rugby took a nice step forward this past weekend, beating a very strong Grand Valley State University side 38-26.
For a young Trine side that is building and had run into a couple of lopsided defeats, this was an important result.
This was the first home game for the Thunder and was played under the lights against GVSU—ranked #13 by GRR going into thr weekend. Trine opened the scoring in the 11th minute with a quick tap from freshman flyhalf Dan Seymour, who offloaded to sophomore prop Wayne Ager to drive over. Seymour slotted the conversion to open the scoring 7-0. About six minutes later Seymour popped a nicely-weighted crossfield kick for upperclassman wing Rhett Saylor to chase down. Saylor was taken into touch, but the ensuing lineout from GVSU was not straight leading to a scrum for Trine. It was from that platform that freshman No. 8 Broc Roper picked up and drove to just short of the tryline. Over Trine went, but were held up.
The Lakers did well to turn that around to a good attacking chance. Wing Noah Purdue broke down the sideline but Seymour and scrumhalf Brian Tippman took him into touch. The Lakers stayed in Thunder territory however and capitalized on a isolated player to score at 31 minutes, making it 7-7.
Trine kicked off but was able to regain the restart and looked set to score—Seymour broke several tackles to get close but lost the ball forward before he reached paydirt. Finally, senior center Nate Ware broke through and that was followed on by a run from senior center Rex Chapman-Shadik. Ware finished off the passage of play a few phases later, breaking two tackles and crashing over line to make the score 12-7 going into halftime.
