Women College 7s Update
Women College 7s Update
We're coming close to figuring out who is playing where in women's college 7s.
USA Rugby has still not announced officially what are their qualifiers. What they have is a list of tournaments that applied for qualifier status, but no confirmation that those are the qualifiers. But, while they say "Never Assume" we are making some assumptions along the way.
Here's what we have.
Davenport won comfortably at their own tournament this past weekend. It was a small field of teams, and Davenport defeated Grand Rapids 29-5 and Kent State 29-0. Kent State beat Grand Rapids to make the final against Davenport, and the final was 34-0 DU.
Davenport previously lost on the final play of the game in the final of the Michigan 7s, to Michigan (17-12 final score).
Harvard beat Dartmouth 10-5 in the final of the Ivy League 7s on Sunday. Claire Collins scored a try and a conversion and penalty finished it off. Freshman Delia Hellander scored five tries on the day. Genevieve Quirion scored two crucial tries in a 22-19 semifinal win over Princeton.
That has rounded out the winners in all but one (applied for) qualifiers. Navy hosts a tournament this coming weekend.
The qualifier winners are:
UC Davis
Navy
Michigan
Stonehill
Lindenwood
Kutztown or East Stroudsburg
Texas A&M
Penn State
Central Washington
Davenport
Harvard
The CRC Invitational has already settled on its 16 teams, which are: Bloomsburg, Clemson, Dartmouth, Drexel, Indiana, Kutztown, Life, Lindenwood, Navy, North Carolina, Northeastern, Notre Dame, NSCRO Selects, Penn State, Temple, and Delaware
So expect Penn State, Lindenwood, Kutztown and Navy to bow out of USA Rugby Nationals (although teams have tried to play in both ... and you might see Penn State try it).
The MARC 7s on April 8 had Kutztown defeating Bloomsberg in the final - both CRC teams. But College of NJ hosted a tournament this past weekend and that was won by East Stroudsburg, as they beat Delaware. ESU won the series. So even though USA Rugby currently lists the 1st MARC tournament as its qualifier, it makes sense that really it's the second that would be useful to them.
USA Rugby's event will have 12 teams, so there aren't a lot of places. The expectation is that Michigan, Stonehill, Texas A&M, CWU, Davenport, Harvard will participate. The winner of the Navy tournament (as long as it isn't Navy) should qualify, as well. But there are some other very strong 7s teams we haven't seen at the top of the tournaments, such as AIC, Notre Dame College, Stanford, Norwich, Army, Air Force, and James Madison.
So if we were to populate the USA Rugby Women's College 7s Championships, we'd maybe do this:
UC Davis
Michigan
Stonehill
Texas A&M
Central Washington
Davenport
Harvard
Notre Dame College
AIC
East Stroudsburg
Norwich
Army or Air Force