GRR: Harvard
Harvard's victory in the NIRA D-I final is yet another indication of how, at times, difficult games through the season can prepare you better for success than blowouts.
It's not that Dartmouth weren't a good team, far from it, but they were shaken when things didn't go their way—shaken sufficiently to make their comeback a bit more difficult.
In two superbly dramatic, well-played, and close games, the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association crowned their champions Saturday.
These are the women's NCAA varsity teams, and the two finals were barnburners.
The big word coming out of the Harvard camp this season has been “resilience.”
The defending champions did not find the 2024 NIRA season easy, despite returning a large chunk of their championship team from 2023.
For the third year in a row it will be Dartmouth vs Harvard in the Women's NIRA D-I final.
Both teams won their semifinals on Saturday.
Two weeks after beating Brown by over 40, Dartmouth faced Brown again and much more difficulty shaking their Ivy League rivals. Brown did well to rebound from a strong Dartmouth start, but they did end up chasing the Big Green.
Dartmouth is now secure on top of the NIRA D-I after the Big Green beat Harvard in Cambridge over the weekend.
This was a tense game throughout and it actually wasn’t until the 30th minute that anyone scored. Jordan Duncan finished off a nice sequence to give Dartmouth a 5-0 lead. women's rugby team improved to 5-0 on Saturday with a 26-19 win over rival Harvard.