Women's Rugby Goes 3-1 at Dartmouth Tourney

The trip to greener pastures often involves a long and eventful journey. For the seniors who built the Harvard women’s rugby program from the ground up, the end of that journey was a trip north with the hope to capture a tournament at Dartmouth College for the second straight weekend.

The team tallied four more wins on Sunday but faltered in pool play against Army and missed the championship game on point differential. However, the team did regroup to knock off the tournament hosts and climb the podium in the final tournament of the season.

HARVARD 26, AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE 5

Although a championship game appearance would have been nice, the tournament’s third-place contest did allow the Crimson to appreciate two graduating seniors, Claire Collins and Mariah Turner, whose class was the first entirely under a varsity program.

After a quick early hiccup that allowed AIC to open the scoring, Harvard got into tune for a blowout win. The stat line belonged to underclassmen, who spread around the scoring for five tries. But that productivity gave the graduating seniors more time to celebrate.

Making a comeback to the playing field after taking a semester off to study abroad, Turner played the entire game to close out her career. While her apparent impact on the field might be limited, she worked dynamically with Collins and junior captain Maya Learned as a team leader.

“She was always checking game minutes. She was always getting equipment ready and filming what we needed to film,” sophomore Caitlin Weigel said. “So she was really a silent worker behind the scenes. But also during practice, she would step in, and we would scrimmage against her.”

Even after so much time off, Weigel noted a specific “chemistry” while she was on the field, one that will take time to replace.

HARVARD 10, DARTMOUTH 7

As one of the marquee rivalries in collegiate rugby, the two Ancient Eight schools perennially butt heads in tight games. After dropping a close matchup in the Ivy League championship game last weekend, Dartmouth looked for revenge on its home turf. The heavyweight battle failed to disappoint as both teams were in the game until the end.

The Big Green came out hot and scored the first try, but a Harvard recovery was never out of the question, especially because Dartmouth had also struck first the previous Sunday in the Ivy Championship game.

But soon after, the momentum changed as the Crimson’s top players took over the match and controlled the play on the field. Weigel soon drove through the defense after a scrum to put Harvard on the board.

After some tough calls earlier in the tournament, Harvard was the beneficiary of a final possession before half as the result of a penalty on Dartmouth. True to character, Collins snatched the opportunity by punching in a try to put the Crimson ahead by three points.

“We call her Mama Claire,” Weigel said. “She is the hardest worker, the most positive person, and the most mature person. So she will be so missed next year. After the final game, we all just hugged her and were crying because we know that she is such a valuable member to this team.”

HARVARD 24, AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE 5

Often tough losses make teams lie down, especially because the chance of earning a spot in the title game was dwindling. But adrenaline from the Army game kicked in, which compounded with the motivation to end on a high note for the seniors.

“These were some of the same teams that we had been playing during our previous tournaments,” Weigel said. “But it was good to have some time off from them and really hone in our own skills as a team and then to play them again and see how much we’ve grown and improved.”

The younger players on the team understood the significance of the final tournament. Sophomore Genevieve Quirion had her try sandwiched by two scores from star freshman Delia Hellander as Harvard rocketed out to a 17-0 halftime lead.

After the break, the two teams traded tries, as the margin that the Crimson had built proved insurmountable. The result is especially impressive considering that the Yellow Jackets faced the Black Knights in the final of this tournament last year. In a change of pace, Harvard has outclassed the Western Mass. squad multiple times this season.

ARMY 26, HARVARD 7

After coming off a lesser opponent, the Crimson faced a much tougher task that forced the team to switch into higher gear. Army’s more composed squad forced Harvard not to simply rely on tactical advantages but rather physical fundamentals that the team had recently practiced.

“In practice, a lot of our work has been on the point of contact,” Weigel said. “So when you are an attacker and you have the ball, just fighting through and keep your feet and driving your feet all the way until your teammates tell you to go down. And on defense, we have been really focusing on staying connected in our wall and making sure that the ball carrier on the other team doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

Army jumped out to a 12-0 lead after the first half, but the play was closer than the score indicated. The tight contest featured numerous calls, but Harvard was still in the game going into one of its most important halves of the season as it contended for a spot in the title game.

Learned was able to keep the game close after a call set up Harvard deep in Army’s defensive zone. But fortune ran thin, and the Cadets benefited from several whistled penalties. Bad breaks alone did not do in Harvard, as Army played with bruising effectiveness. The Cadets ultimately landed in the finals of the tournament.

“Army’s definitely one of the most physical teams in the entire nation, and that’s just a product of them being a part of the US Army,” Weigel said. “Their entire job is to be physically fit for combat. They were definitely the toughest team to face in contact. That game, overall, gave us a lot of passion moving forward because we were hanging with them.”

HARVARD 17, WEST CHESTER 7

Facing a lesser team to start the team’s last tournament of the season, the Crimson had a prime opportunity to jumpstart its offense and get prepared for the toughest pool matchup of the day against Army. The Crimson dominated the start of the game. Early on, the team stole a line-out and subsequently punched in the try. The team was then able to get another score soon after its ensuring kick-off.

But that sequence might have been the best the Crimson played all game. Numerous miscues in handling the ball, including several knock-ons, forced a relatively close 12-0 score at the half. Harvard was able to put the game out of reach by virtue of an early try.

Early struggles aside, the strong finish during the afternoon fits in with the team’s culture of constant improvement as the young varsity squad becomes its own. This year, the team dropped just five games and won its second consecutive Ivy title.

—Staff writer William Quan can be reached at william.quan@thecrimson.com.