Dartmouth looks to defend Ivy League title vs. Harvard this weekend. /// Photo courtesy Dartmouth Sports (Matt & John Risley) •
The Rugby Weekend kicks off tomorrow in Chicago, but there is plenty to play for around the rest of the country …
Read “Who’s In? Who’s Out?” for those teams vying for conference titles and berths to the DII fall Round of 32. Also read “College Landscape Plotted” to understand where your team/league/division fits into the national scene.
CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS
CAPITAL (DII)
The semifinals and final will be played this weekend. Remember that this is the lone DII conference naming its champion in the fall but competing in the spring championships.
Mary Washington vs. George Washington plays Saturday at 11 a.m. Eastern. Mary Washington advanced after a 36-22 win over reigning conference champion Salisbury. Bernice Kear scored four of six tries, while Ebony Clarke and Jenn Moreland dotted down one apiece. Jackie Sherman slotted three conversions. George Washington won its quarterfinal 27-12 over UMBC. The team is led by captains Mary Horn and Antonia Keutzer, who scored two tries against UMBC. Dobra Ogeh also scored twice, and Jessica Murillo accounted for the fifth try.
At 1 p.m., Towson and Old Dominion contest their semifinal. Towson posted a monster 88-22 quarterfinal win over American, and counted Rose Kalala, Masha Romanchak, Joy Huber, Miracle Davis, Christina Simmons, Sandy Zvitkovitz and Ivanna Dasilva among its try-scorers. Old Dominion was equally impressive against George Mason last weekend, banking a 78-10 win. Sha’Quayla Davis, Alex Dow, Kayla Lawrence, Lyric Jones and Mariyah Hicks all spent time in the try zone.
IVY LEAGUE (DI)
The final round occurs Sunday, Nov. 6 at Harvard. The third-place game between Brown and Princeton will be played at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, followed by the title bout between Dartmouth and Harvard at 2:15 p.m. When the Big Green and Crimson played each other in the regular season, Dartmouth triumphed 22-19.
NORTHEAST (DI)
Saturday, Nov. 5 @ UConn
Semifinal play-ins
#3 Northeastern vs. #6 Boston
#4 UMass vs. #5 Rhode Island
Semifinals
#1 UConn vs. winner of #4 vs. #5
#2 Boston College vs. winner of #3 vs. #6
The championship will be contested Sunday. All games are 60-minutes long.
FRIENDLIES
Quinnipiac and Penn State are meeting at Mount St. Mary’s this weekend in a varsity vs. DI Elite friendly. The Maryland site was chosen partially because the school is joining NIRA next year and this game will be a nice showcase.
“Yes, we are looking forward to the match against Quinnipiac this weekend,” Penn State captain Gabby Cantorna stated. “We love any opportunity to play rugby together and they did us a big favor in adding us to their schedule and allowing us another weekend to go out and play a quality team. As far as the D1 champ vs Varsity champ we don’t really look at it that way … For us it’s just another quality game to prepare for the spring season, and a good opportunity to look at different combination options. The team changes every year, new people come in and older players graduate, so this group has been focusing on what we can do to better ourselves from the fall to the spring as opposed to what happened last year.”
Also looking forward to the academy game between Air Force and Army. It will be a nice warm-up for both teams, as Air Force has locked up its DI fall quarterfinal berth and will play Texas A&M in Cincinnati Nov. 19. The Black Knights will host their Nov. 12 NIRA quarterfinal as well as the varsity league’s final four weekend Nov. 18-20.