Davenport Univeristy (Grand Rapids, Mich.) returned to the road last weekend and followed its season-opener at Life University (Marietta, Ga.) with a 15s game against West Chester University (West Chester, Pa.). The Golden Rams were also playing in their second rugby game of spring, and provided excellent competition and a two-point contest. [Photo: Doreen Madalian]
RELATED: Panthers Ready to Pounce on Spring
Davenport entered the year with solid numbers in the mid-30s, but then the roster thinned out as players, notably freshmen, returned home with hopes of rejoining the team without Covid-19 implications.
“It’s been a very new, different type of year,” said Davenport senior Mariah Pruitt, who captains the team alongside senior flanker Bethany Gable. “With the team dynamic so different, we’ve struggled with the motivation to get up and train and do all the little things it takes to be a high-level rugby team. … We hadn’t played in a year, and none of us knew if or when we’d play games. Even when we had schedule, we knew games could be canceled at any moment. So it was difficult to keep the same energy like previous years.”
Photo: Doreen Madalian
Pruitt admitted to a dip in motivation as well, although her distraction related to her studies ending and an impending graduation.
“Being a leader for a small college team can very difficult because there are so many outside variables, things that the girls and coach have to deal with,” Pruitt said. “Life gets in the way of focusing on rugby sometimes. But being a leader means it’s up to you to set the pace at practice and to make sure we’re getting the most out of our time together.”
In addition to Gable in the forwards, Pruitt noted sophomore flyhalf Addy Ochoa and senior fullback Megan Bird as guiding influences in the backs.
Photo: Doreen Madalian
“I don’t think we’re quite back there yet, personally,” the No. 8 said of the team’s buy-in. “I’m back there just because at this point, Covid has taken away so much of my time with rugby that I want to make the most of what I have left. Even if we get eligibility back, Covid has taken away my growth between junior and senior years.”
Initially Davenport’s scheduled filled with Big 10 fixtures and 7s tournaments, but one by one, those events were canceled due to the pandemic. The Panthers then took advantage of an opening in Life University’s schedule. Penn State hadn’t been cleared to play and canceled the DI Elite teams’ March 20 match, so Davenport jumped on a bus for Marietta, Ga.
“I was so relieved that they decided on four 15-minute increments,” Pruitt said of the game against Life JV. “It was a really good option for us to get used to hitting bodies on bodies again and also work our system a bit and have that time to gather and talk about it, because it’s been so long since we’ve been in game situations.”
Photo: Doreen Madalian
Life got up quickly, but Davenport improved with each subsequent quarter. Pruitt watched as the game started to click for the team and how players stepped into leadership roles to educate newer players. In the end, Life JV won 29-14.
“After Life, our training was so much more intense as far as the effort the girls were putting into it,” Pruitt said. “They saw that we could compete with a good team, even though it was their JV side. When we performed well against them, they got excited and wanted to keep getting better and make that progression.”
After a solid week of training, the Panthers were back on the road to West Chester University in Pennsylvania. Davenport came in with its points of focus – technical things it wanted to improve from the Life game – and embraced a positive, supportive mentality against a team it had never played before. The Golden Rams were coming off a 24-12 loss to Queens University of Charlotte the week prior, and the reigning NIRA DII national champion was eager to put in a good performance for its home opener.
Photo: Doreen Madalian
“The first half was a little messy,” Pruitt said. “We were getting a feel for how they were playing and how we can match up against that. But we were on our back feet quite a bit. They were a little faster than we anticipated and they had more energy than we anticipated. That made a big difference. We had a lot of mistakes and errors in the first half but luckily we were able to recognize those and fix them up as we could.
“One big thing was our scrum had a lot of issues,” the captain said of second-half fixes. “At practice we’ve had to try out a lot of different people in the front row and locks. During the game, we had some issues getting the scrum stable but in the second half we finetuned those details and were able to get a good drive and clean ball out the back.”
West Chester took a 15-7 lead into the break and extended to 22-7 at the 53-minute mark. Lauren Madalian, Christelle Alce and Katie Wallenburg scored the home side’s tries, while Julianna Aliprandi kicked two conversions and Corinne Gallagher added a penalty. The teams then traded scores, with Autumn Czaplicki dotting down for West Chester at minute 57, 27-12 to the hosts.
Photo: Doreen Madalian
“The turning point happened maybe around the 60th minute,” Pruitt said. “Someone scored and it was, ‘Hey, we’re still in this. They’re still 20 minutes left and we can still win.’ We got excited once we realized that, because obviously both teams went in wanting to win. Momentum picked up and helped us run low, make good hits, make yardage and support each other.”
Davenport scored three-straight tries in 10 minutes and took a 29-27 lead with 10 minutes to play. Gable, Bird, Mackenzie Horsley, Paige Grossi and Ashleigh DeWitt scored Davenport’s tries, and DeWitt kicked two conversions.
“We were down the whole game until the last try, which was in minute [70],” Pruitt said. “We wanted to score again but we knew that we had to – not play safe, but protect and control the ball. It’s exciting at that point because the game can go either way.”
Photo: Doreen Madalian
Davenport held on for the victory.
“The team was very happy, especially a lot of freshmen and sophomores who haven’t experienced that kind of close game or comeback win yet,” Pruitt said. “We still have a lot to work on and a lot of growing to do before we get to the level we want to be at. But this just shows that the work we’re doing isn’t for nothing.”
Davenport is done with 15s for the spring, but has three more fixtures ahead. This weekend, the Panthers head to Tennessee to play Lander University in a 7s series. The trip is a homecoming for Pruitt, who played high school rugby at McMinn and with former Tribe coach Buck Billings, the current coach for the Bearcats.
“It’s a big thing for me in terms of my family support,” Pruitt said. “They haven’t seen me play college rugby outside of a couple of games so it’ll be really nice for that. … It’s my senior year, I’ll graduate in May and our school isn’t have a big graduation ceremony, and so most of my family won’t come up and celebrate. So I’ll go down there and feel the support they’re giving me in my school-life-university journey.”
Photo: Doreen Madalian
The team will end with a home-and-away 7s series with Notre Dame College. West Chester will play two more 15s games: Penn State on Friday, April 2 and then Mount St. Mary’s on April 29 in Maryland.
Pruitt will back as a fifth-year senior and is hoping 2021-22 is more like her freshman and sophomore seasons than the past two years. With that said, she recognizes she and the rest of the team are in a fortunate position this spring.
“The girls have so much appreciation for our coach and rugby community,” Pruitt closed. “They’ve made such an effort to find and give us these opportunities to play because it’s hard to enjoy playing rugby if you can’t play rugby.”