Rugby grabs a national championship

Author: Livingston Burgess

The Middlebury men's rugby squad captured its first national title Saturday at Stanford's Steuger Stadium. Led by Pascal Losambe '07 and Ari Silverman '09, the club team beat Arkansas State 38-22 in a match that the Panthers controlled from the outset to the final seconds. Coach Ward Patterson described it as the greatest rugby game in which he had ever been involved.

Fullback Craig Wilson '07.5 opened the scoring several minutes into the first half of the match. Plunging straight through Arkansas State's line of defenders, he took a pass right down the middle for the game's first try.

Losambe's first score, a dive into the corner to finish a bone-jarring run, followed soon after. For the rest of the day, he would prove immensely difficult for the Indians to bring down.

Silverman converted the try off of Wilson's score. His foot wreaked havoc with Arkansas State's field position, and it also scored some difficult points on conversions and penalty kicks.

"Ari was lights out," said Patterson. "Here's a guy in his third semester of playing the game, and he converted every kick he tried. Every one. And he was immensely gracious about it too."

The Indians began mounting a comeback in the latter portion of the first half, getting two tries and just missing a third to bring the score to 14-12, but they never came any closer. Silverman made a penalty kick and Max Levine '09 came up huge with a blocked kick, before recovering it in the end zone to give the Panthers a 24-12 advantage at halftime.

"I went in expecting to win by a good strong gap," said Patterson, "[but] I definitely didn't feel comfortable at the half. Confident, but not comfortable."

Arkansas State came out energized for the second period. They were able to win a few scrums from Middlebury and threatened to score for most of the first few minutes before Chris Allard finally turned the corner and dived in for a score. The Panthers responded quickly, however, with Forwards-Captain Jimmy Manyuru '07 scoring a try, which Silverman again converted.

This set the stage for Middlebury's biggest defensive stand of the match. The Indians pressed an attack, badly needing a score to stay in the game, and were repelled with the ball within an inch of the goal line. The Panthers were able to whittle valuable time off the clock before making their own drive that culminated in Charles Wirene '07 making the match's final try and effectively putting it out of reach.

Patterson had nothing but praise both for his own team and his opponents. Before the game, when USA Rugby officials told them that their traditional pregame ritual was not allowed, the Panther and Indian captains met and discussed honoring one another on the practice field.

"This day was one of those perfect days of college sports," said Patterson. "The parents, the weather, everything was perfect. The harmony was absolutely wonderful, and the honor we gave our opponents and that they gave us was spectacular. Everything from the bagpiping beforehand to the post-match celebration went flawlessly. There wasn't even a single foul for foul play."

It was not an easy road for the Panthers to reach the national championship field. They had to go through adversaries such as Northern Colorado and Yale that were significant tests. Moreover, those games came after countless hours of determined training.

"The factor that everything turned on was the decision made in February of last year that we were going to earn the right to play in this game," Patterson said, "and that we would do everything that came with that. After that, all the wheels started to turn in the right direction."

Much of the team spent spring break on campus, practicing five- to six-hour days and watching film at night. They worked over winter term without a concrete practice schedule, and did not even scrimmage between the first of November and the national tournament, choosing rather to train and refine their skills. On Saturday, they showed the final measure of grit, with all but one of the starters playing a full eighty minutes.

"There wasn't a kid on the team who didn't play until he had nothing left in the tank and then some," said Patterson. "I'm phenomenally proud of these kids."