Navy’s ready to return to DI playoffs. /// Photo: Colleen McCloskey •
It’s a very rugby story: Guest coach holds clinic for team; coachless yet optimistic players impress; guest coach starts re-evaluating schedule for “free” time; guest coach becomes head coach. That’s how Scion Rugby Academy CEO Joanne Liu found herself dressing as Navy’s head coach last year and why she’s eager for her first full fall season with the DI team.
“As always, I said I didn’t have enough time to coach a collegiate program, but then I got chatting with them about their needs,” said Liu, who runs her own restaurant business in addition to the National Development Academy. “It’s a program with such a long and great history but has been forgotten for a couple of years. They had some coach turnover after Sue Parker went to Harvard.”
There was a coaching void, “and so I thought: Maybe we can find time and make it work if I have assistant coaches who can help out,” said Liu, who brought on academy members Kimber Rozier and Sam Pankey. “And then like everything with rugby, you get passionate about it and it gets hard to separate. It’s a really fun project.”
Liu inherited a young team, and it’s still mostly underclassmen as the coach prepares for her first full fall season with Navy. She’s expecting approximately 30 players.
“At Navy, literally everyone is new [to rugby] where other schools might get some players with high school experience,” Liu said. “We’re spending a lot of the fall just on skill development and rugby knowledge. Here, it’s a bit more about using rugby to continue their development as future officers versus wins and losses. Fortunately, the qualities that make a good rugby player and effective officer align.”
A lot has changed since Navy was a veritable DI contender. The Midshipmen advanced to the 2013 ACRA final four, and then attempted to stabilize through subsequent coaching changes. Meanwhile, the nation started realigning competition wise, and Navy watched as former competitors joined the varsity league, now called NIRA, and DI Elite. Favoring the fall 15s, spring 7s set-up, Navy didn’t fit into the DI Mason-Dixon conference, and so it competes as an independent DI college.
“We’d like to be considered for that DI at-large bid,” Liu looked toward the DI fall championship. “We wanted it last year but we were a little late to the game in submitting a bid. [This year,] we made sure we could schedule enough games so we could demonstrate to Johnathan [Atkeison] and Tam [Breckenridge] and USA Rugby that we deserve it.”
Navy will face varsity teams Army and Harvard this fall, as well as local powers Virginia Women’s Rugby (UVA) and James Madison University, among others. If needed, the DI play-in round begins Nov. 12-13, followed by the quarterfinals Nov. 19-20, and the fall final four on Dec. 3-4.
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