For the second straight year, the Virginia Tech Men's Rugby Football Club has qualified for the Collegiate Rugby Championships being played this weekend in Philly. This three-day tournament is where the best of the best in collegiate rugby compete in front of friends, fans, and USA Eagles scouts - there are no divisions here; it's varsity sides like Life and #1-ranked Cal, and club sides like Tech lumped together. The teams are split up into pools (Tech has drawn quite the challenging pool with Arizona, UPenn, and Life University), with round-robin play beginning today and finishing up tomorrow. Sunday will contain the tournament play, with teams seeded according to their performance in pool play.
This afternoon, Tech scored a huge upset, knocking off Arizona 29-0. Tomorrow, they'll open up against Life at 2:16pm and then take on UPenn in a nationally-televised match at 5:26pm. Various matches will be broadcast on NBC sports and Comcast Sports Net. The full TV schedule can be found here.
Comments
Life?
School in Georgia who is REALLY proud of their rugby
Yeah, they're mostly a chiropractic school that spends about as much on rugby as most FBS schools spend on football. They recruit all kinds of guys from South Africa, New Zealand, etc.
And create their own patients for the chiropractors to practice on. A self-sustaining program.
Here's a pretty cool story from Rugby Today on Tech's win yesterday. The video at the bottom of the article catches the tail end of the VT-Arizona game, including a last-second try and some commentary on how Tech just knocked off one of the best coaching staffs in the country. After that, it's about an hour and a half of 7's rugby, so if you aren't doing anything today and want to see some exciting 7's, check it out.
Tech's 29-0 Upset Win Over Arizona
Shutout.
Am I the only one who was confused by the title at first?
"What is our rugby team doing at the Corporate Research Center??"
Valid point. Got you to click on the post didn't it?
Thank you for that.
Update:
Tech lost a hard-fought contest to Life University 19-0. Life didn't allow a single point in pool play and is considered one of the top two teams in the country, so that was a respectable effort by the Hokies. VT followed that up by stomping UPenn 34-12 on national TV.
Tourney play is split into four tiers, based on pool play performance (record in pool play, with the tiebreaker being point differential for teams with identical records). After going 2-1 in a very tough pool, Tech missed the championship bracket by 3 points and so will play in the second-tier group tomorrow, starting with a match against Northeastern at 2:10. This has been a great performance by the Hokies, who have so far accomplished more than any other team in program history. Best of luck to our guys tomorrow!
Thanks for the thread TechHokie13. Love everything rugby, so any chance to get more information is greatly appreciated.
Got the Penn game recorded and got to watch it.
The first try by VT was outstanding the overlap work was great.
The second try was just the VT player driving through the tackle.
The single Penn try in the 1st half was despite excellent effort on the part of VT#8. Almost kept that ball off the ground.
Today, the Hokies closed out their season on a down note, falling 20-10 to a solid Northeastern team. This was still a great performance by Tech 7's and, although there are some great players moving on after this season, there is plenty of talent still on the roster and lots of success to look forward to in the upcoming year.
Found the full Arizona game here. The camera work is absolute crap (lookin' at you, CBS. Get it together), and the commentator likes to breathe into the mic a bit, but it's still fun to watch. Enjoy.
It sucks that Coach Richards is stepping down...he did a fantastic job with this team and will be missed.
EDIT: I'm also friends with #1. He's also an electrical engineer and I'm happy to see that he kept the stache.
I hope VT rugby continues to grow. It is the one sport I wish I tried when I was in school. Many of the guys I played football with in high school played rugby in college and love it. Any football walkons that don't make the football team should be steered towards rugby. Show them highlights from the any Fiji or New Zealand matches in the Hong Kong Sevens and they will be hooked.
Yeah, we've been trying to foster a relationship with Bud and some of the others to do just that - get walkons who don't quite make the cut. Or even players who graduate and don't go on the the NFL.
If anyone's interested in supporting VT Rugby and getting some sweet CRC gear, we're having a summer auction! Bidding closes at noon this upcoming Friday (the 20th).
What's the information for the auction? I am interest.
Nevermind...the Google found it.