Quinnipiac Athletics photo @QU_Rugby
It was a welcomed sight to see teams back on the pitch competing in what felt like a traditional season-opening weekend for the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA). But just because games are back, that doesn’t mean teams are picking up right where they ended in fall 2019. Teams like Quinnipiac University, which won its opener against Sacred Heart University 48-24, are reacclimating to the feel of a competitive season and are integrating a larger class – the first- and second-year student-athletes – to that environment.
RELATED: Fixtures & Results: Sept 1-5
After halting activity in March 2020, the Bobcats returned to campus for fall 2020. That socially distant experiment began with pods of players working together and progressed to full-team training, only to regress when Covid-19 conditions changed. The give-and-take brought frustration and a sense of impermanence, and players had to confront some tough questions.
“People had to go back to the drawing board of: Why am I doing this? Why do I play a sport in college? None of this is fun right now. I don’t want to do conditioning with a mask on. I don’t want to be playing for an hour-and-a-half and not be able to physically touch anybody,” Quinnipiac head coach Becky Carlson said. “That doesn’t feel like a sport, right?”
So Quinnipiac set small, achievable goals in contrast to other sports that went big with full schedules and seasons.
RELATED: Army Beats Brown in OT
“We want to have two practices in a week and not get shut down,” Carlson recited the first goal of spring 2021. “Then, ‘Let’s go a week and not get shut down,’ Then it was two weeks with the ultimate goal of getting to play a spring game for the seniors. And we got to play two. We were the only team on the entire campus that did not get shut down in the spring season. We got shut down a ton in the fall but in the spring we drew no positives and no exposures, so that’s kind of amazing. That’s a testament to their commitment to their teammates, and them just knowing what they had to do to get one more competitive crack at the game before they end probably two of the most dismal years of their lives as collegiate athletes.”
But even those two 15s games against Sacred Heart in the spring were strange and laden with restrictions – from wearing masks in lineouts, to not shaking hands after the match. It was a reminder that Covid-19 still ruled.
“I think there’s this hesitancy to really get into loving this stuff again, because people have this sense that it might be taken away, because that how it was all last year,” Carlson said. “It’s almost this, ‘Hey, we don’t want to enjoy this too much because we think it’s going to be taken away from us.’”
There are growing pains in terms of existing together as a group, as well, and Carlson laughed as she talked about the tidiness of the locker room, for example, which now sees the whole team in there at once as opposed to three players at a time.
“When it comes down to it, everyone going back to being on the same page, it’s a really difficult thing to do as a coach and to negotiate within your culture,” Carlson said. “But we’re O.K. One of our pillars is gratitude and continuing to be grateful, so we’re just going back to it week by week.”
As game day approached, Carlson noted the normal nerves and excitement, but the squad’s mood was also different knowing that there were larger on-field questions to answer. For one, teams are essentially inaugurating two classes of players – the freshmen, of course, but also the sophomores, who are playing in their first league seasons.
“That’s the big thing: Everyone’s sophomores are freshmen, basically. Nobody had a first year so in terms of exposure and experience, you’re dealing with two first-year classes,” Carlson said. “Typically you have three classes who understand it all and they’re pulling along one class. This is half of the team pulling along half of the team. … Forget being on the field for a second, this is educating half of the team on how to function as a team.”
It’s a new challenge for Carlson and assistant coach Brad Dufek, as they’re forced to think differently about players’ stages of development.
“We’re putting special emphasis on our sophomore class and watching them very closely in terms of their development,” Carlson said. “It’s being patient. Things a sophomore would normally understand inside the set pieces, they don’t, because they weren’t able to touch each other or do scrums or lineouts. It’s them really working overtime as students of the game to kind of catch up.”
Carlson asserted that everyone’s getting support but that the sophomore class “is two years in and they’ve never known what college rugby looks like from a competitive standpoint, from a practice standpoint and from a cultural standpoint. Those are three really big pillars we’re having to catch them up on.”
Distinguishing the leadership has also been difficult, since the team has been dispersed and group dynamics aren’t as easy to read. There’s a leadership group, and junior Libby Moser is speaking captain on game day.
“Being a leader during Covid when you’re not with the whole team the whole time and trying to figure out who those leaders are, is difficult,” Carlson said. “We did leadership training over the summer with live scenario homework – that kind of stuff – and Libby was phenomenal with it. She slid into that leadership role and is probably one of our strongest in terms of being a student of the game.
“Libby’s always going to have great linebreaks,” the coach continued. “She’s pretty dynamic off the ball. I expect great things from her.”
Additionally, the senior class has had an interesting cycle at Quinnipiac. The Class of 2021 arrived in Hamden, Conn., the year after the Bobcats won their last national championship.
“I think there was a lot of pressure for that specific class coming in,” Carlson reflected on the seniors’ freshman years. “It was people pointing to them like, ‘Are you going to better than the other classes? Is this going to be a fourth national championship?’ And there was a lot of distraction there. Managing that as a coach and working with team leadership to figure out how you balance that respect for history without enclosing that identity on them. … You can always hold onto history and look at your levels of success and all of that, but I think that’s something they’re going to figure out and we’ve been doing a lot of work with the leadership, working with new players.”
It’s a lot of recalibration, BUT, everyone’s going through it.
“I told them the other day regarding teams in NIRA: Whatever you think you know about any of the teams we’re playing against pre-Covid, scratch it. Everyone is hitting the reset button,” Carlson said. “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your record is. I don’t care what players you have. Every single team is going through a reset. That’s our mindset: It’s to recognize and respect that reset and to be better every week.”
Quinnipiac ran out to a 31-3 lead against Sacred Heart, as Kat Storey (2), Addison Walker, Fódhla Ní Bhranonáin and Allison Koenig scored tries. Abbey Terpstra kicked three of her four conversions in the first 40.
“I couldn’t have asked for a higher work rate than they did,” Carlson said of that sophomore class in particular. “Anna Van Dyk has been an absolute rock star for us in the lineouts, line-breaks. She got strong over the summer – there’s so many things about her. As you try to focus on that sophomore class she’s just going to be a sponge and work overtime to connect the dots and catch up to where she’s supposed to be. She’s been a really good catalyst for that in the sophomore class.
“Same things with Hannah [Pfersch], she’s exactly the same way,” the coach continued. “She’s playing front row for us right now and not particularly loving it but she’s doing a great job for us there. She’s just a force in the middle of the field, explosive in small space. There’s so much about those two that is just fantastic.”
Lily Cartwright, younger sister to junior Gracie, showed well in the freshman class.
“I think the Cartwright family comes tackling right out of the womb. They just go,” Carlson said. “And once Lily gets her feet wet at the blindside position and really understands her role, she’s just going to be as much of a force as her sister is.”
First-year Riva Van Der Valk from the Netherlands stood out among the newcomers, as well.
“You’ll enjoy watching Riva … She’s just relentless,” Carlson said. “She’s that person if there’s a ball in the air she’s calling people off and going for it. She goes hard into contact and has great field awareness. She’s going to be good for us.”
In the second half, Sacred Heart found some footing and outscored Quinnipiac 21-17 to finish 48-24 overall. At the end of the game, after the team cheers, the squads stood there looking at each other wondering whether they were allowed to shake hands and say hello to each other.
“Speed of ball is certainly something that within the first 10 minutes, ‘Oh this is what it’s like when the other team is actively 100% trying to strip the ball from you,” Carlson critiqued the opener. “The ground work, speed of ball, pre-launch – all the things we worked on in practice we’ll continue to polish those.
“Even without Covid your first game always feels so shaky,” the coach continued. “It all seems to come together once kickoff happens and the nerves just fade away. And then you’re just dealing with people being in the right spots and developing that communication for the connectivity between the backs and the forwards. [When we watch film] they’re all so eager to talk about not just the things they need to improve on, but I like that they were pointing out the things that they did well, because I think a lot of this generation tends to gravitate toward what they didn’t do well, because they’re really hard on themselves.”
Again Carlson laughed when she recalled her conversation with freshman Mariah Norris-Johnson, who scored a second-half try alongside Alexis Haskins and Pfersch.
“It was her first college game. She’s typically a back player – 12, 13 – and I subbed her into the front row,” Carlson said. “She’s not super comfortable there but she went in and she scored. She was right there off of Anna’s outside shoulder and she just crossed the line and it was awesome. I asked her, ‘How do you think you played? ‘Oh, I think I could’ve played better.’ Didn’t say one thing about how she just had her college debut and that she scored. But that’s Mariah for you, she always expects more from herself. But it does go back to players being hard on themselves.”
The next three rounds bring teams that also won their season-openers: Dartmouth 92-5 over Long Island; Harvard topped Mount St. Mary’s 53-5; and Army defeated Brown 26-19 in overtime.
“Next week we’re going up against Dartmouth with Kristin Bitter, and Emily [Henrich] and Lilly [Durbin]. C’mon,” Carlson said. “You’re looking at a team that can put some points up on the board and punish you across the try line if you’re not going to be putting defensive pressure on them. If we hang back and wait, we’re not hard off the line and we’re not intentional about our possession and our retain and regain, then Dartmouth delivers. That’s what we’ve been harping on with them.”
Carlson indicated that that’s the preparation for every opponent, not just Dartmouth. Some adjustments at training are reinforcing the discipline that’ll be necessary against all of Quinnipiac’s opponents. Little tweaks to parameters at practice – like requiring a pass to a support runner before dotting down a break-away try – are allowing the team to get there on their own. Hopefully that process occurs in step with a general return to normal, where there’s no restraint in enjoying the good things that are happening.