Day One at Midwest Brings It
Day One at Midwest Brings It
St. Edward and Penn HS will be facing off for the Midwest Championship Sunday after both won shortened games on Saturday at the beautiful Moose Rugby Grounds in Elkhart, Ind.
While some high-profile teams in the region opted to bypass the tournament (school commitments, injuries, and prom all were reasons), that's the way of the game in general. Show up and play and get the trophy, or don't.
St. Edward opened against HSE-Fishers Mudsock, and stuffed Mudsock in their 22 and kept them there. While the Eagles' finishing wasn't clinical—one player slide on his back over the tryline but didn't know it and so tried to play the ball back instead of touch it down; another was held up and another attack was stopped by an interception. However, eventually St. Edward started to settle down and use their forwards to back over a couple of tries.
With a more comfortable lead St. Ed's relaxed and kept control in a 24-7 win in which Mudsock saw few scoring opportunities.
In another quarterfinal, Glen Ellyn and Bishop Dwenger played a wild one. With time winding down, the teams had both scored three tries. However, Dwenger hit all of their conversions while tough angles made the kicking a little tougher on Glen Ellyn and they had none. Hence the 21-15 lead.
Glen Ellyn put it together for one more attack and scored to make it 21-20. But with the wind and the angle playing its influence on the goalkicking, the conversions was missed and Dwenger held on 21-20.
Penn played the Chargers out of Indiana and won comfortably 48-0. Avon, led by their intelligent, shifty, and Mohawked flyhalf Gage Poland, took apart a hard-working St. Xavier side 38-12.
So that send up the semifinals. Penn produced a powerful effort against Avon, scoring a penalty goal early and then opening their play up. A nice combination of power crashing through the middle and speed of ball movement saw Penn score two tries out wide before Avon was able to get on the scoresheet. Penn won 36-7.
In the other semifinal, St. Edward once again controlled possession and field position. Dwenger was unable to get much going and St. Edward won 26-5.
Meanwhile Glen Ellyn did well to rebound and beat HSE-Fishers Mudsock 20-12, while St. Xavier shut out Chargers to set up the 5th-place semifinal.
So Sunday's matchups are:
Final: St. Edward vs Penn HS
3rd-4th: Avon vs Dwenger
5th-6th: Glen Ellyn vs St. Xavier
7th-8th: Mudsock vs Chargers
In the Open Division, Perrysburg of Ohio went 2-0, beating West Ottawa 47-10 and Birmingham 29-17 and will play Catholic on Sunday.
The growth of the Midwest Championships has actually been in the younger sections, the JV and Developmental Divisions. The JV bracket was a full eight-team event—St. Ignatius and Penn will play in that final.St. Ignatius JV, made up of mostly sophomores with some juniors, beat Mudsock 38-5 and St. Edward 47-7 in 90 minutes of action.
The Developmental bracket is more of a festival format, with St. Ignatius putting in an all-freshman team (Ignatius 1) and an all-sophomore team (Ignatius 2), had two squads, while St. Edward, Moeller, Neuqua, St. Xavier, and Notre Dame de la Salette all had one.La Salette's team was formidable—physically small they were tactically and in terms of technique accomplished. Quick, good with the ball in hand, and brave in the tackle, they punched above their weight in impressive fashion.
Ignatius 2 relied on power and played aggressive defense, shutting out St. Edward but getting a bit of a lesson in a 33-5 loss to Moeller. The freshmen, meanwhile, beat St. Xavier 50-0 as their backs relished the wide, perfect grass fields at the Moose Rugby Grounds. They found a tenacious opponent in La Salette but came back from a 14-12 deficit to win 34-21 behind an active game from scrumhalf Mark French and the go-forward of loose forward Connor Bender and center Keegan Forkappa.
Moeller won both of their games, taking Neuqua 40-19 to join Ignatius 1 at 2-0. They did not play each other.
