Oct 17-18: NRU Championships
Posted on Sunday October 25th, 2009 @ 09:09:18 am

The Lion women went down to Monmouth, NJ to play in the NRU Regional championship this weekend. Although there was some debate about rescheduling the tournament given the cold, windy, rainy weather, in the end it was decided to continue as planned. The first game was against the second-seed New England qualifier, Albany.

Albany was a well-pulled together team: small, speedy and organized; and the connection between the scrum- and fly-half was almost seamless. This was a challenge for the Lions, as IC Jackie Finlan noted, “Albany was the first dynamic back line we faced all season, and we had issues adjusting our defense. While we had the inside attack locked up, there were a number of overloads on the outside – a strategy that resulted in at least two Albany tries.”

Albany was the first to score, putting in two unanswered tries in the first half. Lions’ defense was a bit flat-footed, and although they exerted some pressure when they had the ball, they didn’t have a long enough stretch of possession to work it down to the try zone.

That changed around halftime when Woman of the Match and captain Meg Collins dotted down in the corner. The try was not converted, but the momentum shifted enough for the Lions to regain some ground. Silent Force Kathleen Ryan scored next, and this time the conversion was made, putting the Lions up 12-10 with about half an hour left in the game.

The next few minutes were hard-fought by both teams, and in the end precision of play and speed helped Albany prevail; they scored with about 15 minutes left to take the game to 12-15. While the Lions never gave up, they also never again posed a serious threat, and Albany slotted a penalty as time elapsed to bring the final score to 12-18.

The game was, “a system shock, ” noted Jackie, “but it was a necessary one. Hopefully it inspires the team to be better.” The loss to Albany ended Lions’ hopes for Nationals, and the other regional qualifier from Met-NY, Monmouth, also lost (to Providence), meaning a re-match between the Lions and Monmouth on Sunday for third place.

Lions 12
Tries: Collins, Ryan
Cons: Warren

Lions XV (substitutions not noted): 1 Taryn Goodman 2 Meredith Harmon 3 Kelly Rogers 4 Sari Warren 5 Jessica Houser 6 Jess Beck 7 Tricia Stanley 8 Meg Collins 9 Renee Ovrut 10 Erin Martschenko 11 Becca Asser 12 Jackie Finlan 13 Rosie Rough 14 Kimbo Dacres 15 Kathleen Ryan

On Sunday the third place game was slated to start at 9 am, and the weather had turned colder than the day before. A field change meant the game against Monmouth would also be muddier than the previous day’s game. The change caused the team van and a car or two carrying Lions’ players to be late for warm-ups; and some questionable U-turns made by the van’s driver left one team member carsick. Injuries to some key players also meant a re-shuffle of the previous day’s line-up, especially in the backline. All-in-all, it was a somewhat discombobulated team that took the field against Monmouth, a team the Lions had beaten handily only the week before.

Neither team played as though they had much to prove, but Monmouth seemed to have more fight than the Lions. Each individual Lion played hard and well, but the team lacked the cohesion that was one of their most valuable assets all season long. The game was scoreless for the first half, but right at the beginning of the second a Monmouth player darted in and scored, putting Monmouth in the lead 5-0.

The frustration of losing to a team they had just beaten finally put some spark into the Lion’s play: the forwards began rucking more reliably, and the backline started to click better than they had been. (Well, maybe it was the frustration, maybe it was that after 40 minutes of running around the team had finally warmed up.) In the last 10 minutes of the second half, the team’s energy was finally converted to points, as Rosie Rough sprinted in and centered her try. The conversion attempt went wide (Shoot! BETWEEN the posts!), leaving the game tied at 5 after 80 minutes. There should probably have been some type of overtime to decide a winner, but the coaches of both teams decided to call it a day, and the Lions retreated to NYC to lick their wounds and play another day.

Lions 5
Tries: Rough

Lions XV: I don’t know. Tell me if you played!

Captain Megan Collins had some thoughts about the Lions’ regional experience as a whole, and here they are: “Regionals, specifically the Albany game, were disappointing. It’s really hard to play against team of our own caliber when we don’t see that type of competition all season. It was definitely a reality check for next fall. We need to have that same level of competition in the spring to prepare us for next fall’s league season. I think the team knows what we want & what we need to do to get to nationals next season.”