Kutztown University has been bumped up to #1 in Goff Rugby Report’s fall rankings thanks in large part to their 39-26 defeat of Army on Homecoming Weekend at Kutztown.

It was a watershed moment for the program - a crucial win in Rugby East, played in front of a big home crowd, and their first-ever win over West Point.

The crowd and the game, as Kutztown found some space to run, but won it in the forwards. Photos courtesy Kutztown Rugby. Click on image to enlarge.

It came thanks to a solid effort from the forwards, who punched in three almost identical tries in the second half to put the game away.

“They,” said Army captain Donny Goff (no relation), “wanted it more than us.”

The game could have gone either way. Early in the game Kutztown was camped out in the Army 22 but the Bears weren’t getting points. Eventually those tries started to come, but it was 22-21 in the second half and on a knife edge - again it was Kutztown that regained the momentum.

“Our mentality on this team - our coaches preach to us - is that we’re down by five,” said flanker Jordan Ghyzel. “We play as if we’re down by five. We keep that urgency. So when we had kind of lost the momentum, [Head Coach] Doc [Jones] told us - we need to get that momentum back. And that’s what we did.”

“Our biggest thing was ball retention,” added flyhalf Jonathan Sage. “Sometimes we were frustrated, but we were patient overall and we know it doesn’t matter how many phases it takes.”

So with the Army defense coming up fast, working the outside wasn’t necessarily in the cards. And while Kina Malafu and Robert Storts (playing with a broken thumb, by the way) made breaks and scored some tries, in the end the breaks would be finished off by the forwards.

“When their forwards were pressuring us on our goal line we know it puts more on our work load,” said Sage. “So we also knew when our forwards have go-forward we needed to keep it there.”

“Against Wheeling Jesuit we had a pretty good game keeping the ball in the forwards,” added prop Johan Van Wyk, who would score two key tries down the stretch. “We knew Army has a big pack and our forwards stepped it up and kept the ball well and kept us on the front foot.”

“We knew it was going to be a tough fight toward the end,” added No. 8 Wes Hartmann. “These are the men who are going to defend our nation, and you want them to go through to the end, and that’s what they did. But we needed to play to the end, too. We had a great game from our tight five - guys like Nick Hohlt and Evan Anderson - you watch the film you see them always getting to the rucks, always there in support.”

So Kutztown won the Big Game, and it was big. Andy Lewis, who founded the rugby club over 30 years ago, was in attendance and was brimming with pride. 

“You see the crowd here, and what Doc and the players have accomplished; to beat Army and push for a conference championship is a very big deal,” said Lewis. “People here are starting to see what we can do, and the students we can attract to this college, and how we can put Kutztown on the map. It matters.”

“We knew in the back of our minds that this was a big game, no matter how much we try to downplay it,” added Hartmann. “But in the end we’re the only variable we can control.”

“In the beginning of the season we talk about our goals; one of them was to win the conference,” added Ghyzel. “We take the game one game at a time, but we also knew the second half of our season was loaded up with tough games.”

“We wanted to do it for Doc, we wanted to beat them,” added flanker Dylan Smith, who after graduation will enter basic training at Quantico having completed Officer Candidate School for the US Marine Corps. He wants to fly jets, but he also wants to win rugby games. “This was a big game. We want to go undefeated. We want to do undefeated into the Bowl Series and wrap it up. We’re hitting our stride.”