Can Close Out Perfect Ivy Rugby Regular Season Next Week Against Harvard

Coming out for the second part of a weekend doubleheader in Hanover, Dartmouth Rugby could have been set-up for a letdown Sunday afternoon against Penn. While they didn’t start as well as they did in the previous day’s match versus Princeton, the team eventually got things rolling and cruised to a 57-5 win over the Quakers. With the victory, The Big Green is now 6-0 in the Ivy Rugby Conference can secure a perfect regular season next week at home against Harvard. Either way though, the team is guaranteed the #1 seed in next spring’s Ivy Championship after Princeton’s loss to Brown, which will determine what team represents the conference in the USA Rugby National Championships.

Such long-term concerns didn’t seem to be on the mind of Captain and No.8 Paul Jarvis ’12 after the match though. After a tough weekend of games, he was instead trying to take a balanced perspective on where the team is heading into its final 15s match of the fall. “Obviously, we are pleased after defeating Princeton and Penn this weekend, but the focus really is on reaching our potential before the end of the fall. We improved greatly in the areas we focused on during the week, notably tackling and keeping our depth offensively, and we’d like to continue to move forward in these areas going into the Harvard match, We expect a big crowd over Homecoming weekend and we look forward to playing the final match of the fall Ivy season on Brophy,” he said.

Kicking off on a brisk and cloudy fall afternoon, Dartmouth found themselves unable to get much in the way offensively early on with multiple knock-ons and errant passes. However, their defense proved more than up to the task, stifling the Quaker attack so that the attack had more than enough time to work out the kinks. Eventually, fullback Madison Hughes ’15 broke the dead lock, getting past Penn’s defensive wall to make the score 7-0. With the first points on the board, The Big Green quickly began to build up the lead. Wing Justin Ciambella ’13 and prop Lawrence Anfo-Whyte ’13 added two quick tries to make the score 17-0 about 20 minutes in. Dartmouth would hold this lead until about 5 minutes before the half when Ciambella and Hughes both made return trips to the try zone to extend it to 31-0 heading into the break.

Ciambella would continue to terrorize the Penn defense in the 2nd half. While center Clark Judge ’12 would get the first score to make the lead 38-0, Ciambella would provide two of the next three–the other going to wing Kevin Clark ‘14– to stretch it to 57-0. Fittingly enough, he would score the last Dartmouth points of the day with a try. Between his four tries and six conversions, Ciambella accounted for 32 of Dartmouth’s 57 points on the day.

Dartmouth will close out the 15s portion of their fall schedule Saturday against Harvard. The match will kick off at 10:00 am at the Corey Ford Rugby Clubhouse, which is located at 9 Reservoir Road in Hanover, 1.8 miles north of the Hanover Inn, off of Lyme Road. Directions can be found here: http://www.dartmouthrugby.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=109.

Following the end of the Ivy League 15s regular season, the team will transition into 7s mode in preparation for the Ivy League Rugby 7s.