VCU Rugby clubs competition

One game.

The VCU Men’s Rugby Club made its way into state playoffs, the Ed and Sandy Lee Cup Playoffs, by one game.

It was a game where the team might have felt the most pressure on their unpredictable run to become not only the state’s rugby champions for Div. III competition, but also the champions of the Mid-Atlantic Rugby Football Union.

“We played ODU,” said Steve Parker, coach of the VCU Men’s Rugby Club.

“We needed to win that game against ODU to qualify for the state championship. We killed ODU 6-3 with a penalty kick in our last minute of the game. That kick got us into the state championship, and told us that we could do this. We started thinking after that we could win.”

With the win over ODU and a dominating victory over Hampden-Sydney, the 2-6-1 rugby team made its way into the state playoffs with a swagger that would not be expected from a team with their record.

“We want to make sure that we are confident in our forwards to dominate,” said the club’s president Andrew Parker. “If our forwards feel good and they think – they don’t have to be – but they have to think that they are better, then they’ll play like it.”

The strengths on the pitch -rugby term for field- for this rugby team are their forwards, who battle for possession and field position while trying to give the back line its best opportunity to score. But it is the 38 characters on this team that propelled them into championship form.

“One of the reasons we are so much better this season is because we’ve got over 30 kids on our roster so at practice we have enough to have an A-side and B-side. One of the ways we got better is that our B-side is pushing our A-side. Like in the championship game when (Andrew Parker) went down, I had no trouble putting a freshmen in his position halfway through the second half,” coach Parker said.

Vice president Rebecca Daniels also agreed that having more club members benefited the team.

“It made them have to come to practice. That’s the most important thing,” she said.

Daniels said the in-house competition even caused a veteran player to leave because of the pressure coming from new players.

But with increased in-house competition, the chance of attitudes flaring over lost playing time or being pushed too hard was not a worry for this team.

“I think we are more friends first. The first day you come to practice you gain 30 friends, so I think we all get along with each other. There are no big quarrels among the team so I think that allows us to get along off the field (and) on the field,” Andrew Parker said.

The team added a few elements to their chemistry formula at the Rucktoberfest Tournament at Appalachian State. In the midst of three losses, the team furthered their bond with each other.

“I think something happened a month before (the state playoffs),” coach Parker said.

“The first weekend in October we took 35 kids to Appalachian State. The record in the tournament was bad but what that did for us was two things. One, it built the team. We went down. We traveled in too many buses, (but) we had a great time. It built team spirit and team camaraderie. We played two of the best teams … we learned that maybe we could do something,” he said.

It was after this tournament that they played ODU for their first and most important win of the season and that things began to click on a winning level for the team.

Coach Parker said the team’s approach to practice after the experience of the Rucktoberfest Tournament and the two wins heading into the playoffs translated to such harder practices that he e-mailed a friend saying, “We’re ready to play.”

The first opponent in the state playoffs was Longwood, the undefeated defending state champions. By far the underdog in this game, VCU approached it similarly to those unlikely teams in movies such as “Hoosiers” and “Necessary Roughness.”

“This year we went not to lose. We’ll play our hearts out as long as we can,” Andrew Parker said.

That is exactly what happened. The team fought a determined Longwood team to a 13-10 victory.

But another upset was yet to come in the state championship game as VCU avenged an early season defeat to The College of William & Mary.

After falling 22-0 in their first meeting, the Rams downed the Tribe to win the season, winning the championship 16-0.

The winning for VCU was not finished, however, as they earned their spot in the Mid-Atlantic Rugby Football Union championship game against Franklin & Marshall College. Underdogs yet again, the Rams were up against not only an undefeated team, but also a team they knew nothing about.

“All we knew (was) that they were undefeated. We looked at them and they looked small. So were like OK. Same game plan. We’re bigger. We’re stronger (and) we’ll run over them,” Andrew Parker said.

For the first three quarters of the game, we were winning 18-5, Coach Parker recalled.

“We were rolling. Midway through the second half, we were up 18-5, and I was sitting back in my chair,” he said.

Franklin & Marshall did come back to make it 18-15 but VCU held off the charge and won the championship 21-15.

“There is nothing that can top that,” Andrew Parker said.

Not a player and not a coach, Daniels also shared the confidence of the team.

“They knew that they weren’t the best, but they knew that they were at their best, she said. “I had it in my mind that I couldn’t picture (VCU) not winning while they were there. They were such on a high, I just never thought in my mind that they wouldn’t win.”