Freshman Annie Rolf / Photo: Jackie Finlan
Lindenwood is making its second trip to California in as many weeks, and this upcoming journey pits the DI Elite teams against each other in the national championship final four. On April 21-22, the Lions traveled from St. Charles, Mo., to Palo Alto and defeated Stanford and Chico State in the first two rounds of spring playoffs. On May 4-5, Lindenwood heads to Fullerton and will play BYU in Friday’s semifinal.
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Teams that aspire to the spring 15s championships as well as the national 7s championship (the finals of which are separated by two weeks) must combine 7s and 15s fixtures into their spring schedules. Lindenwood is certainly part of that group pursuing both versions of the game in the same season, and so the trip to Stanford’s Steuber Rugby Stadium was all about building chemistry within the top 15s side. And even though Lindenwood brought several players who featured in the 2017 DI Elite National Championship – McKenzie Hawkins (a Sorenson finalist), AnnaKaren Pedraza, Nika Paogofie-Buyten, Tiffany Person, Ariana Lewis, Caring De Freitas – there were many new faces in Palo Alto.
“I feel like I keep saying, ‘We have a young roster,’ but again, another year, we kind of have a young roster,” Lindenwood coach Billy Nicholas said. “Just looking at the roster, we have nine new players who were not with us last year.
“We’ve had quite a few graduates from last year, people who’ve gone on to the [Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center] or who’ve taken time off to focus on school, injuries. And so we’ve had a lot of new people step up and buy into the system and buy into the program,” the coach added. “It gets us excited as a coaching staff and a team that these people are going to be here and keep growing, and that we have to keep challenging them so they continue to do well in the future.”
Freshmen Destiny Arena, Penina Tuilaepa, Natalie Gray, Alia Ah Far, Meg Gold and Sativa Tarau-Peehikuru all started against Stanford, and fellow first-years Annie Rolf, Kodi Barlow, McKenna Strong, Malia Hemehema and Kanani Uluave took the pitch in the second half. The Lions won 154-0.
“Joyce [Taufa] was with us her freshman year and came back. I think she was a big impact player playing #7 [Saturday]. She was around the field all day – a non-stop, motor kind of player,” Nicholas said. “[First-year] Casey Karl, I thought she played well on the wing. And someone we’ve been pretty hyped out – Sativa [Tarau-Peehikuru], who was playing wing [Saturday] and 12 [Sunday] – she’s played well. These two matches we’re still experimenting with some positions and seeing what works best for us going forward.”
Despite the outcome, Lindenwood identified some areas that needed refinement.
“We allow the athletes to center that conversation. … They’re pretty critical of themselves, and they came up with plenty of work-ons,” Nicholas said. “Even though it was a shutout, there were some areas on defense that we want to work on a little bit, mainly our spacing. … Attack looked great. It would have been good to string together a couple of more phases and get tested a bit, but I thought we really brought a fast pace to the game and that’s something we want to continue to do against any team we’re playing.”
Lindenwood continued to focus on its execution against Chico State in the DI Elite / DI Spring quarterfinal last Sunday.
“We haven’t really seen Chico before, but I know they’ve been undefeated this spring and that definitely takes effort to put up that kind of record,” Nicholas said in advance of the Sunday match. “We respect them as an opponent, what they can do, and just take one game at a time.”
The Lions won 71-0 in a game that was called with approximately 15 minutes to go. Chico State advances to the DI Spring semifinals, while Lindenwood heads to the DI Elite national semifinals against BYU. The victor will then play the winner of Penn State vs. Life for the title. Last year, Lindenwood advanced to its first national 15s final, and fell just short of Penn State, 28-25. It was heartache for Lindenwood, but also valuable experience.
“So, taking one game at a time and combining that [mantra] with confidence,” Nicholas said of lessons brought forward. “I think last year’s final we were kind of playing against the name, but after the first half we realized, ‘Hey, we can hang.’ That second-half momentum really led us into the fall, being able to put up that win against Penn State. We put ourselves in a position where we’re confident in our ability to execute and our ability to do well.”
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