Davenport Victory Just Reward for Not Backing Down
Davenport Victory Just Reward for Not Backing Down
When new college conferences are formed, merged into one, the same question always presents itself—"what will you do if you finish last?"—because someone is going to finish last.
For many teams, the answer tends to be "find another conference." If you find yourself looking up at the rest of the league year after year human nature does lead you to look for a softer place to play. But not Davenport.
Davenport has been a part of the buzzsaw Mid-South since the spring of 2014. During that time (up until last week) the Panthers have gone 6-39 in conference play. Of those losses, 12 were within a try, and, notably, three of the last six conference losses were within a try.
You might think that the Davenport program would walk away from the Mid-South, but they haven't, and in fact hve continued to play good rugby, get some playoff nods, and produce national team players including Aaron Cummings, who showed quite well for the USA 7s team this past weekend. And this past weekend, they beat Life University 23-10—the first time the Panthers had beaten Life ever after 20 straight losses. Was it a sign that Davenport has taken a step up to the level of Life? Why not?
"We don't want to go down a level because it's easier," said Davenport Head Coach Dustin Steedman. "Honestly the NCR was dangled to us, and there were plusses and minuses to that. But my big thing is looking for good competition. Life, Lindenwood, Arkansas State ... I just want to beat these guys. And that's how the players feel. They want to play the best. Going to an easier competition is not my philosophy and it's not my players' philosophy."
Perseverance and a desire to improve has been Davenport's hallmark. They have been charging at this giant stone wall for a while, inflicting damage and worrying everyone behind that wall, and this week they broke in.
"Everybody is, of course, super excited," said Steedman. "It's the first time in our history that we've beaten Life. From the coaches' point of view, we knew we had the ability, but not always the believe. These guys have had a different attitude all season long. They have that believe, and with that believe we've developed our ability to finish off games. It was moving belief to reality."
A Weird Game
The game itself, said Steedman, was weird. There was a strong wind and yet both teams played their better rugby going into the breeze.
"The wind was howling," said Steedman. "But here we are going into halftime with the wind with Sean Nolan and his boot and I was feeling very good about that. But we kind of couldn't get out of our own way and Life changed their attack and picked up the pace of their attack. But what we did do was defend really well."
And that they did. Belief was a big part of that. The Panthers just didn't give up on plays, and repeatedly Life was held-up in-goal. And maybe that was how it should be. It had to be a struggle. After all, Davenport Rugby is not a stranger to struggles. They knew they were playing some good rugby, but, yes, winning is nice.
Winning is nice, but not everything. Being in the fight, being in one of the toughest conferences in the nation means something, too.
"It's all about building something," said Steedman, adding that everything needs to be put into perspective. "It was a great win but we haven't won anything other than a tough game. We have another game coming against Arkansas State and then Lindenwood. We need to take it one game at a time. This is a tough conference, but we love our conference."
