Women's Rugby Dominates University of New England

The Harvard women’s rugby team gave the University of New England a rude awakening in the school’s first ever intercollegiate rugby game on Saturday afternoon.

The Crimson (2-0), dismantled the Nor’easters (1-1) 54-0, pushing the team to its second win of the season and continuing its dominance over opponents in the early stages of this season.

“I was really happy with how we played yesterday,” sophomore Caitlin Weigel said. “We didn’t start off the best, we were actually pretty sloppy in the opening half but our second we fixed what we needed to fix and we came out and destroyed the competition.”

Leading the destruction of the University of New England was senior Claire Collins, who had four tries over the course of the game and lead Harvard in all offensive categories on the day. Her four scores came in as a career high for the four-year member of the team, who is currently the only senior on the Crimson’s active roster as well as the only remaining member of the era of Harvard rugby that did not recruit players to come to Cambridge.

“It’s weird for me because I was a walk-on and these girls know what they’re doing,” Collins said. “It’s really nice to have the rugby knowledge and they have really good vision and are able to understand the space and see the game flow.”

Though Collins was dominant on the pitch, the Crimson had other key contributions on both sides of the ball. Sophomore Akweley Okine ignited the scoring for Harvard, converting the first try in the opening minutes of the game. After that puncture, the floodgates opened for the Crimson.

Collins followed Okine’s scoring drive with three of her own, giving Harvard a 22-0 advantage over the Nor’easters before the half.

Of her four tries, Collins scored one off of a set piece on a scrum, while the other three came in opening field play where the team had done work to bunch the defense away from Collins, enabling her to communicate her passing needs to her teammates and ultimately barreling through the opponent’s defense.

“Claire has been a great leader this year,” Weigel said. “She leads by example in everything we do. She’s always there when any of us have had questions and she’s really stepped into that leader role, especially in her senior year.”

Weigel recorded her own try for the Crimson to cap off the scoring on the day. Classmate Jenny Kronish and freshmen Delia Hellander and Emily Prentice each scored for Harvard in the second half, rounding out the onslaught of points the team brought against UNE’s defense.

On the other side of the coin, the Crimson’s defense held its opponent to seven points or less for the second game in a row. After handily beating Navy, 32-7, last week, Harvard did itself one better this week when it held the Nor’easters to zero points over the course of the game.

“Having these games is giving us a lot of confidence and getting us really excited to play some tough competition later in the season,” Weigel said. “We’ve been working really hard on our defense so to know that the scoreboard reflects the work we put in at practice is really awesome.”

For veterans on the team like Collins, this season is an opportunity to see the rugby team’s full potential and test the work it has put in during the off season and during pre-season practice.

“This team is really exciting and there are a lot of young players but they’re really understanding of how the game works and how we align and how we work together and we’re really working well together which is really cool.” Collins said.

Staff writer Ariel Smolik-Valles can be reached at ariel.smolik-valles@thecrimson.com.