The University of Arizona traveled to Grand Canyon University for a men’s and women’s doubleheader under the lights Friday night, and returned to Tucson with two wins. After a tight first half, the Wildcats pulled away for a 43-19 victory to improve to 3-0 in the DI Pacific Desert conference.
RELATED: DI Pacific Desert Schedule & Results
The victory marked the end of a years-long rebuilding phase for Arizona, which had essentially graduated its starting line each of the last three years. Now the team has players who joined as freshmen and sophomores and are now excelling as upperclassmen.
“The other thing that has helped is we have a good group of freshmen, some have played before, some haven’t,” Arizona head coach Rusty Wortman said. “They have great athleticism and a keen interest in the game, and that’s really helped.”
Captain Ava Kiechler is leading the way from hooker, and freshman forward Amber Godinsky is among the newcomers making an immediate impact.
“Ava has really taken the role of being a captain to a new level, and is an example on and off the field,” Wortman said. “She’s starting to analyze the game and help everyone start to analyze it as well. She knows the strategies of the game and has set goals and objectives for the team, and they’ve bought in.
“Amber has ingrained herself and adapted really well into the system and is starting to come into her own,” the coach said of the freshman, who played in high school. “She’s setting an example and starting to lead a lot of the forwards in game play.”
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Flyhalf Amaya Singleton and inside center Maya John set the tone in the backs, on both sides of the ball.
“Amaya is really starting to figure it all out and see the game,” Wortman praised the flyhalf. “She’s reading defenses and understands what needs to be done, where the ball needs to go and what patterns to run at certain times.
“Maya just excels,” the coach added. “She’s a great power runner with a keen instinct for the game.”
In addition to a more robust roster, the team is also benefitting from a newer partnership with the men’s program.
“Director of Campus Recreation Troy Vaughn loves the rugby program and what both teams were doing, so he committed to invest in us,” Wortman explained. “[Men’s head coach] Sean Duffy is the Director of Rugby. We’re still two different entities and make our own decisions, but we’ve started pooling resources and maybe in the future one day we’ll combine fundraising efforts. But now we can present ourselves to the university as one club with a bigger student body, and it’s helped us resonate with the university who we are.
“It has to be a partnership,” Wortman said of the teams’ union. “It’s been step-by-step. There are a lot of positives, but have there been a few setbacks where we were concerned for our future? Always. But we’ve been able to talk it through and figure it out. ‘This is what’s good for the women; how will it affect the men in a positive way?’”
Duffy, whom Wortman affectionately described as “a rugby geek,” is a full-time employee of the men’s team and supports the women’s team at practices. With USA age grade and EIRA experience, Duffy is a great resource for Wortman in terms of brainstorming game strategies.
“I wasn’t sure how big of a step we were going to take, but we’ve taken a step forward in many different ways,” Wortman said in advance of the 2020 spring. “We lost some players [to academics, internships, life] in December, but the team really filled into those positions and stepped up. We haven’t lost a step.”
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Arizona used a pre-season friendly against DII Claremont College to tinker with combinations and positions (the Foxes dominated that outing), and then traveled to UCLA for its season-opener.
“Going into UCLA, it was a big emphasis on defense. That is the one thing we haven’t really solved, something that we needed to fix going into the year,” Wortman said. “We also worked on the link between the forwards and backs, and there’s more synergy than there’s been in the past. The groups are syncing better and that’s a big step for us.”
The defensive performance helped produce a 14-5 win against the Bruins and follow with a 31-21 win over UC San Diego.
“There isn’t really a leader on defense. We’re trying to ingrain more and more that it’s everybody at once and it can’t just be one person,” Wortman said. “And when you watch the film, it’s not 1-2 people but different people stepping up and taking that [leadership] role in different situations. They’re realizing that defense isn’t one person making the tackle and it’s everyone coming up together and exerting pressure.”
Team confidence rose after those two victories, as overall understanding of the pattern increased and confusion decreased. The backs in particular began to show some comfort in a new attack, embracing new principles and executing well. Then it was time for Grand Canyon.
“Grand Canyon has beat us handily the last several years and has been a very dominant team, to their credit, and they’re still a very good team,” Wortman prefaced Friday’s game. “We were the underdog. Looking at the last couple of years and what we know about them, we really emphasized our strengths that we needed to bring to the match and worked on areas of improvements or areas we thought they’d exploit. Our goal was to keep it close in the first half.”
Arizona took a 12-0 lead on tries from Singleton and John, and conversion from Talia Ben-Yosef. The host answered in kind for a 12-12 draw at the break.
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“Their forwards are really able to move the ball and incorporate a few backs, and that put us on our heels a bit. We had mistakes and penalties that they capitalized on, too,” Wortman said of the Lopes’ comeback. “We made some second-half adjustments and … emphasized play in the back line. That’s where our strength was [Friday]. The backs were able to create opportunities and really work the ball downfield. When the ball went back to the forwards, they were able to hold onto it and drive the ball phase after phase, and that opened it up for the back line even more.”
John and Godinsky, who had a fantastic game at prop, scored during the opening 10 minutes of the second half, and with Ben-Yosef’s conversion pushed the lead to 24-12.
“The breaking point came about 15 minutes into the second half,” Wortman said after John scored her third try of the match. “The forwards started to break through the gain line farther than they were before, getting 5-6 meters instead of a couple. That put Grand Canyon on their heels more and made it difficult for them to reset on defense. They had to come in and cover more, and that opened up more opportunities for the backs.”
John and Singleton worked the back line, and Nikita Ganesh added some extra speed that made an impact. Lock Lindsey Navis and Kiechler added tries in the subsequent 10 minutes to lead 43-12, and the Lopes ended the day with a converted try: 43-19 the final.
“The biggest thing is everyone now sees the team they can be,” Wortman said of the win’s effect. “As a coach, you look at a team and know their potential but it’s getting them there and having them realize it. They’re starting to see it.”
Arizona is approaching the midway point of the regular season and still has UC Santa Barbara, CSU Northridge, BYU and rival Arizona State this spring.
“Anything can happen on the back half of the season so I’m always cautiously optimistic,” Wortman said. “The team we have right now can play through with great success but I know other teams can rise to the occasion any time, because we’ve seen it before.”
The team that finishes atop the standings will take the automatic berth to the DI spring regional playoffs. The Pacific Desert playoffs are for teams 2-5, and they’ll face each on April 4-5 (at a TBD location in Arizona) to determine the second seed to regionals.
“The biggest takeaway so far is that it’s a great platform for next year and years to come,” Wortman regarded the season thus far. “We took a great step going forward, coming out of rebuilding years, and into future.”
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