Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) is traveling the farthest – approximately 800 miles to Columbia, Mo. – for the USA Rugby DII Fall College Championship playoffs this weekend, but it’s a trip for which the Scooters are ready. The Allegheny champion is a regular at this stage of the post-season and looking to get past that quarterfinal round into the final stages.
RELATED: Fall Championship Brackets (use tabs at bottom of doc to move between comps)
Erica Houlihan represented IUP rugby from 2004-09 and then moved into the head coach role immediately after graduation. The Scooters have featured in the DII fall regionals in 2015, 2017 and 2018, advancing as far as the quarterfinals before being halted by Cincinnati.
“We’re very lucky in the fact that we have consistently been a playoff team for the past few years, which has really helped incoming players get accustomed to our game play and our competition level quickly,” the coach noted expectations. “This team is very blessed with their leadership – our captains, as well as our senior players, are very hands-on in their ability to teach the sport and steer the ship.”
The team is not awash in numbers but guides like captain Alina Withers make sure that every player develops into a meaningful contributor.
“[She] has really helped to shape our on-field performance, presence, and strategy,” Houlihan praised the skipper. “She has an exceptional rugby IQ, and has garnered a lot of respect from her teammates and peers as a result of her consistency and talent, as well as her approach to coaching and playing the game.
“We have a lot of up-and-coming players that I think you’ll be hearing a lot about in the next few years,” the coach turned to the depth. “I could really give you any name, because I have a lot of confidence in our players to achieve and compete at a high level, but one player you will want to watch out for is our captain and fullback, Rachael Collins. She has really been standing out this season, and I look forward to working with her more in the coming years. I think she will really be a force to be reckoned with, and I would like to see her on the high-performance pathway.”
IUP worked on its game through the hybrid Allegheny, playing DI and DII teams alike. But it was a last-minute friendly against Bloomsburg University, which is competing in the Mid-Atlantic pool of playoffs this weekend, that provided a lot of intel on the squad.
“We had to dig really deep to keep up with them, and I know the ladies appreciated seeing a team we wouldn’t normally play in the fall season to challenge our skills and our ability to adapt,” Houlihan reflected on the 30-29 loss. “We realized that we had a strong, but green, back line that required some TLC and culture adjustments, and doing so has really elevated our game play. We also discovered that we needed to focus on our cohesion between our forwards and backs in order to present a stronger and more capable front in order to overcome teams that we are evenly matched against.”
IUP put in the work on the train pitch and readied for Miami University of Ohio in the Fall Round of 32. Withers set the tone with an early try, and the Scooters ran out to a 57-10 win over the Ohio Valley conference runner-up.
“The ladies are probably tired of me saying it, but doing the little things well wins matches, and no one is above stripping their game down to the bare bones to reprogram themselves on the technical side of rugby,” Houlihan explained difference-makers in the match. “We often rebuild our technical skills from the ground-up, and I think it makes the difference for us. We didn’t do everything to perfection, and I think that also helps us get these wins, which sounds counter-intuitive, but it really comes down to embracing our mistakes as learning opportunities to be better rugby players, and coaches, and using our knowledge as fuel to keep the train moving.”
The backs did some soul-searching after the Bloomsburg match and worked really hard to get their chemistry right for the playoffs. Rachael Collins employed superb foresight and timing with backs captain and flyhalf Kerstyn Beightley, who was also creative in her play-calling, for five tries. And Ella Spencer earned backs Woman of the Match for her solid first performance back from injury. The connections between forwards and backs were also better, as demonstrated by flanker captain Gina DeCesare, who set up wing Chelsea Beck for a try. Beck also put in an emboldened defensive effort, while flanker and forward Woman of the Match Casie Callihan was a force on either side of the ball.
“It’s difficult not to give credit to all 15, because if they aren’t scoring themselves, they are certainly putting someone in a position to do it,” the coach noted.
IUP now makes the long trip to the Fall Round of 16/8, where it will face Rocky Mountain champion Colorado School of Mines (which makes the second-longest trip to Missouri). Depending on Saturday’s results, IUP will play either Cincinnati or Illinois in a consolation or quarterfinal match Sunday.
“I can tell you we are not going to focus on perfection, because we know that this clouds our ability to adapt,” Houlihan looked toward the weekend. “We’re going to take our match-ups one minute at a time and make sound decisions that will help us put our teammates in the right place at the right time to make moves. We will use our tactical skills in combination with our flexibility and attitude to go out there and work hard, and have fun doing it. We will be as technical as we can, when we can, and hopefully do those little things well.”
The team that goes 2-0 on the weekend will advance to the final stage of the DII Fall College Championship – semifinals and finals on Dec. 7-8 in Matthews, N.C.
“We are really excited to be back in the position to put IUP Rugby and the Allegheny Rugby Union on the map, and we don’t take that responsibility lightly, so we’re in it to win it by focusing on our game plan and staying hungry, and that’s the expectation that leaders and I have going into the weekend,” Houlihan concluded. “We’re amped up to get to it.”
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