Women's Rugby Drops 10-5 to Dartmouth

Following an 84-0 routing of Yale last weekend, the Harvard women’s rugby team (1-2, 0-1 Ivy) came into its first road contest of the season looking to go on another offensive tear.

But unlike the prior week’s contest, the Crimson had a difficult time capitalizing on offense and ultimately fell to Dartmouth in a 10-5 decision.

“We ended up losing by five points which was disappointing,” co-captain Ali Haber said. “We definitely had the power to beat them.”

The match-up marked Harvard’s first official Ivy League test of the season. The Big Green entered the contest with some solid wins under its belt, as Dartmouth topped Bowdoin, 32-5, in a preseason match, and followed it up with a 24-10 victory over Cornell.

“They were just more coordinated as a team and a bit more aggressive,” Haber said. “It was pretty frustrating.”

The Crimson was the first on the board in this weekend’s match-up, as co-captain Xanni Brown scored Harvard’s only try in the first half. The Crimson maintained its 5-0 advantage heading into the last 40 minutes of play.

But the Big Green came firing back in the second half and registered two tries to ultimately come out of the contest on top.

The low-scoring game was mainly a defensive affair, and Harvard had few opportunities to put points up on the board.

“We definitely did a lot of defending in the first half, more than we did playing offense,” co-captain Brandy Machado said.

The team acknowledged some holes in its defense, which allowed Dartmouth many scoring opportunities and put the Crimson back on its heels.

“They had really been knocking on the door for a while,” Brown said. “We just weren’t able to adjust.”

Late in the game, Harvard had a hard time stopping the Big Green’s offensive charges.

“We just had some times where we sort of folded,” Machado said. “[Those times] were important. They definitely caught us on our backs.”

The Crimson also had a hard time picking up its stride as the team struggled with penalties throughout the entire match.

“It was probably the game with the most penalties [that] I’ve ever played in my life,” Haber said. “We were just doing what we do and getting called for everything.”

With the disappointing outcome, the team knows what it wants to work on in preparation for the rest of its matches this season. The team will be focusing on communication, aggression, and working towards coming together as a group, instead of relying on individual players.

“[We need a] whole team effort instead of individual bursts,” Haber said. “That’s what we were lacking in that game. I think part of that is learning to trust each other on the field. We may just need a bit more practice with the people in the group. It also has to come from us, the captains. That’s our job to keep the team cohesive and talking to each other and build that trust.”

The team will try to be even more cohesive on the field, a tough task for the new varsity squad that is working to include some new members in its lineup.

“We got a lot of rookies this year,” Haber said. “They’re super great and we’re really excited to have them. It’s unfortunate that [for] some of them, this was their first game to see, but they’ve been incredible. They’ve been committed, and we’re so happy to have them in the family, so we want to make sure that they see what we really can do.”

Harvard is ready for a tough week of practices as it prepares to take on Brown this weekend in yet another road contest. The Crimson also has its eyes towards some other tough teams coming up on its schedule.

“Training this week is going to be hard,” Brown said. “It’s going to be physical, and we’re going to need to get ourselves into the headspace we need to be in to take on these really tough teams. We’re probably going back to the basics, back to the drawing board on some stuff. [We need] to build up and try to find what’s going to give us success in this league.”