Senior co-captain Cassidy Bargell (r) scored two tries / Harvard Athletics photo
The last time Mignone Field hosted a National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA) match, Harvard was hoisting the 2019 DI national championship trophy. Last Friday night, the Crimson’s pitch revivified, and Harvard celebrated a 53-5 win against Mount St. Mary’s University to kick off the 2021 NCAA varsity season.
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“I think the general overall feeling from the team was just excitement to get back out there and be on the field together again,” Harvard head coach Mel Denham said. “But also added excitement in terms of just seeing what our team was going to be able to do out there together, because it’s a really talented group of players that we brought in. So it was just really fun and exciting to finally see them start to put stuff together on the field in competition.”
But like most collegiate teams, Harvard is essentially welcoming double the number of new players this season, since the current sophomores did not have a freshman season in fall 2020. Harvard did have players defer enrollment and/or international players who could not travel to the U.S. last year, as well as student-athletes who chose to report and train in Cambridge, Mass. Today’s sophomores were able to do some film work and skill work with the team the last year, but overall, the two youngest classes are experiencing the newness of a competitive collegiate season.
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That shift in the dynamic does put more responsibility on the junior and senior classes, and the importance of their leadership has been a big discussion point.
“And just realizing that they are now leaders,” Denham honed in. “The interesting class for us really is the junior class because they’ve come on and they haven’t completed a full year at Harvard, yet. They were here in 2019 when everything was pre-Covid normal, and now they’re back as juniors and they’re upperclass and they’re leading these two classes with the seniors. So there was a lot of conversation around that, and how we can lead, and what kind of leadership is important. We’ve talked about the things that we want to maintain in our culture and the ways that we do things, and the things we want to let go of.”
In other words, there’s an opportunity to use that unorthodox layover to reflect and adjust anything that needs it. Denham used warm-ups as an example, and the fact that they were sometimes unfocused. It was identified as a work-on, and the team had the time and space to correct it in advance of the new season.
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“So now we’ve got this really big class of young players who are looking up to everyone who’s already here, and we can just set the precedent [with warm-ups] there,” Denham said.
“It’s about how we can use this time as a way to advance our culture,” she continued. “Watching more film. We have some returners who said, ‘Yeah, we really could have done more of that in the past.’ That’s something we were trying to work on and now we have the opportunity to really push that. We have all these really hungry and impressionable players who are looking up to [the returners] and they’re really going to absorb that all and keep it going.”
Fortunately, there are two quality captains setting the tone in Cassidy Bargell and Erica Jarrell. Bargell is a senior with a full, final year remaining, and Jarrell has this fall season.
“The two of them just really exemplify our culture and program so, so well,” Denham said. “They’re both very passionate, intense players and also approachable off the field. With their experience at the next level and being with our program for so long, their leadership has been incredible so far.
“We knew we were going to need strong captains to come in and continue moving us forward with that large group of younger players,” the coach continued. “They lead by example on the field … and are incredible role models for us, and again, exemplify our program. They’re really reliable and they make things easier for us, too, so it’s been fantastic.”
Harvard talks team goals toward the end of pre-season, after it’s had time to run around, work together and gel a bit. Then the group sits down a week before the season-opener and talks about foci for the year.
“We did a lot of work on our mental skills and our character building and our values, and we were thinking a lot about that. So a theme for us this year is adaptability, which is kind of a new thing for us to talk about,” Denham said. “But in terms of the goal, I was pretty happy with what the team came up with. We’re approaching it as a ‘best case scenario’ type of thing with the focus of adaptability – if things change, we can adapt – but the team really wants to attack another national championship. So we talked about setting some goals for ourselves to help us get there. It’s very similar to what we might be talking about [in a non-Covid season] but it just might look a little different this year.”
Harvard scrimmaged Beantown at the end of August and was able to process those first-game jitters in advance of the NIRA season. Mount St. Mary’s University traveled to Cambridge on Sept. 3 and the opener marked the Maryland program’s first season with an all-DI schedule.
“We weren’t going to underestimate Mount. It had been a long time since we’ve seen them,” Denham said. “And I know Farrah [Douglas], and I know Farrah’s been building that program. We were going out there ready for a competitive game with the hope that we could get our reserves in and get some more combinations working together, which is exactly what we were able to do.”
Denham noted an adjustment period for approximately the first 15 minutes, but then the team found its flow. Senior Bargell and junior Achele Agada scored a pair of tries apiece, while sophomore Nafi Fitisemanu, junior Alex Pipkin, senior Emma Kearney and first-year Kiani Akina also dotted down. Freshman Chloe Headland kicked 13 points on a penalty and five conversions in the 53-5 win.
“It was a good season opener,” Denham said. “Mount are physical, and we kind of knew that going into it. ‘I’m not sure what to expect but I feel like they’ll be a team that is very physical, very good scrummagers, very good in the contact area,’ and they did that for 80 minutes.”
Harvard was able to empty its bench, which was a big goal for this game, and newcomers were able to gain some valuable field time. They impressed, as did many other aspects of the team’s game.
“So we have a pretty exciting back line, which can be quite explosive when they’re on, and they really had some great connections, some great link play, some great ball movement. So, really happy about that,” Denham reviewed high points from the match.
Bargell and Pipkin are in the middle of the pitch at scrumhalf and flyhalf, respectively, and they did a nice job organizing the team Friday night.
“I think the pace of play – just the speed at which we were able to win the ball and recycle it and play it was incredibly exciting,” the coach continued. “And our lineouts and our mauls. We did one session with that and in the practice I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is really coming natural for us, so that’s awesome.’ They went out there and just scored a couple off lineout mauls. So that will be a fun thing to build off as well as we continue to grow.”
Denham also called out the team’s cast of kickers and the excitement building around their development, so that eventually, “we’re able to play a nice, well rounded game of rugby, like we always like to do,” the coach added.
Harvard returns to the pitch this Saturday and welcomes DI newcomer Long Island University to Mignone. The Sharks had a tough outing against Dartmouth – 92-5 loss – last week.
“I think that people are really hungry,” Denham closed.