Notre Dame de La Sallette put on an impressive display Saturday in a game they had hoped would be  a challenging warmup to their Indiana Super League season.

La Salette, which is based in Illinois but plays in Indiana, defeated Illinois team Fenwick 96-0.

 This followed on other warmup games for La Salette earlier this month, 54-0 over Fishers, and 53-5 over Hamilton Southeastern.

LaSalette is nicely-poised to have a strong season, with a starting 15 of as many as 11 seniors, including a forward pack that has only one underclassman, and experience at every position. Only one forward, their scrumhalf, fullback, and one wing are juniors.

The fullback is Benedict Populus, whose brother Eric was a standout for Eastern Washington, and perhaps more than that. Joseph Brauner is the scrumhalf and a talented halfback.

“We are smaller than most teams and we’re trying to gain some weight in the pack,” said Coach Josh Hayes. “But we’re working hard and we have been working on our skills. We saw Gonzaga’s passing at the NIT last year and we were really impressed. We resolved to work on that, and learning to see the field better and make better decisions.”

Judging by the scorelines, they seem to be doing that. Joseph Rigi scored two tries against Fenwick, as did Mark De Artola and Kevin Brzezicki. Michael Carlisle scored 25 points thanks to a try and ten conversions. Notre Dame de La Salette is a small private school in Downstate Illinois where the majority of the student body plays rugby. Hayes has 50 kids in the program, which is more than 80% of the student body.

“What we need to do is clean up our play around the edges, and making sure our tackling is good,” Hayes added.

But they are looking good now, and they need to as the four-team Indiana HS Boys Super League lives up to its name.  

Also active this weekend was Penn HS, which defeated Fishers 41-18. Those two teams join Royal Irish and Brownsburg in a four-team league that is as daunting as any in the nation.