For Immediate Release
College Rugby
Denver, CO
Saturday & Sunday, May 20 & 21, 2017
William Paterson University Men Fly the Tri-State Flag High
The William Paterson University Men’s Rugby 7s Team qualified for the USA Rugby National Division II 7s Championship last month and this past weekend they flew to Denver, CO to compete and boy did they ever! The 2017 Tri-State Rugby Conference 7s Champions did the Conference proud with a host of quality performances.
The WPU Men’s 7s team flew from Newark, New Jersey landing just before midnight on Friday in Denver. The first shock to the system was the elevation, approximately 6,000 feet above sea level, while the second would be the early start on Saturday where they faced the 2016 USA Rugby 7’s National Championship runner up – St. Louis University.
In fact, Pool C also included the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and had been dubbed the “Pool of Death” such was the quality of the teams – the pundits had already written off the WPU Pioneers.
Saturday Day 1 St. Louis came out the gates firing and WPU fell behind 0-12 down within 3 minutes! It seemed the pundits were right. But the Pioneers had other plans and two tries in that half gave the underdogs a 14-12 lead. The second half continued with both teams slogging it out before two more tries would seal the victory – final score 24-26 to William Paterson University.
The second game was played at the home of USA Rugby’s National stadium and here WPU would face the 2017 National Champions favorites U.Wisconsin-Whitewater. After a very tough battle during which WPU scored twice, the Pioneers would go down 28-14. A wayward pass and a few moments of indecision effectively allowed Whitewater to sneak home. The elevation was definitely a factor with William Paterson exhausting its bench to complete the game. But the effort was particularly impressive considering that Wisconsin were fielding 4 All-Americans.
In the third game of the day WPU would face a determined Endicott team in a game that would decide who would go through to the final eight. Endicott had previously scored 6 tries against St. Louis and WPU knew they’d be in a real fight. Two tries by the WPU captain would hand William Paterson the victory against Endicott 14-12.
Day 1 was in the books and the Tri-State team had made the playoffs. William Paterson advanced to the Elite 8 and had a quarterfinal match-up with another northeast team in Southern Connecticut State University.
Sunday Day 2 The Southern Connecticut game was a show case of attacking intent and it tuned into a scoring try-fest with both teams running in from every corner of the field. Southern Connecticut would however win in the end, 6 tries to 3.
The fifth and final game of the tournament pitted WPU against Drexel University in a fight for the Plate Final. William Paterson University would lose by a single point 26-27 after leading with 20 seconds left on the clock before Drexel ran in a try and allowed them to squeak the win by a single point.
Having been effectively written off by the press before the competition began William Paterson University was the talk of the town after playing so well in their group games and making it into the final 8. The squad performed well in all their games against very strong opponents.
Epilogue
It is worth noting that two of the WPU loses were against the two teams that would finish 1st and 3rd. In addition, all wins between teams placed 4-8th were by 2 or less points – testimony to the competitiveness.
WPU Coach Morne Pretorius summed it up well saying, “On any given day a secondary match-up could have ended differently!”
Congratulations to all the WPU 7s squad on their efforts at Nationals.