Austin Brown throws the ball into a lineout in the men’s rugby team’s last game at home for the year against Fresno State. Photo courtesy of Andrew Nakamura.

Men’s Volleyball

Men’s volleyball ended Carthage’s 14-match winning streak in a four-game match. The team continues their tromp across the country, with Continental Volleyball Conference championship semi-finals on April 13 and finals the next day.

Men’s Lacrosse 

With a 2–1 record, men’s lacrosse looks to their fourth game of their season against Saint Mary’s College, a major rival in their division. The game is at the Upper Field on April 13 at 1 p.m.

Women’s Rugby

Women’s rugby continues its undefeated streak, adding another win of 20–15 against Washington State University in the first installment of nationals for the team. The team is now on to regional playoffs, the next step toward national championships, against CSU Northridge on April 13 at 10 a.m. at Stanford University.

Men’s Rugby 

Men’s rugby crushed the competition in a 65–24 match against Fresno State in their first installment of conference playoffs. Chico State is the next team in store for a faceoff with men’s rugby on April 13 at Chico State.

Women’s Lacrosse 

After a 9–3 overall season record and a 3–1 conference season record, women’s lacrosse has finished at the top of the Division II North Conference. This weekend on April 13 they will face off against UC Santa Barbara, a tough opponent who also finished at the top of their conference, the Division I Central Conference. Women’s lacrosse is also looking further into the future, for regional playoffs on the weekend of April 20.

Photo by Sal Ingram

With hands on each other’s legs, knees bent while staring at eight opponents, a scrum in rugby can be the most intimidating play of the game. It is a play where 16 people can collapse together hunting for the ball, tossed into the fray by another player. For senior Annie “Bert” Ahnn of the women’s rugby club, it’s just another play, another ball to get.

“It’s exhilarating,” Ahnn said. “The intensity of a scrum never lets up.”

On Feb. 4, the UCSC women’s rugby club defeated University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) 26-0. Despite the lopsided score, UNR never stopped fighting in a sunny-day battle for rugby supremacy.

“They gave us a run for our money,” said senior fly half and captain Maeci Brown. “They didn’t want to lose, and they hit us like it.”

The game had no shortage of big hits. Both UCSC and Reno laid bruising tackles on one another. Three players from UNR had to visit the medic for minor injuries because of the intense play on the field in the second half.

“The hits all blur together,” said junior flanker Akemi Yuki. “You just don’t get fazed by them when you’re on the field. You just want to win and help your teammates.”

In the second half, the Slugs broke free from midfield with long runs towards the goal, only to be stopped by a wall of UNR players. After the Slugs attempted to score, UNR stormed back up the field, and on three occasions came dangerously close to scoring. The Slugs’ defense had a stifling shut-out, but was never more dominating than when they were playing on their own goal line.

“They kept hitting us really well,” Yuki said. “And they kept threatening to score.”

Yuki scored two tries, while Ahnn and Brown added one of their own. With the win over UNR, the Slugs recorded their first home win of the season. The Slugs have a record of 1-1, with a loss to Humboldt State University on Jan. 21. Ahnn was excited to score and help her team get in the wins column.

“I was ecstatic to score,” Ahnn said. “When you score, everyone works together, so it’s pretty special.”

In the post-game huddle, Brown pinpointed areas for improvement. She explained that her team’s rucks (pictured above left) and offloads (above right), in particular, were not executed well.

Brown said her team is just starting to come together and play as a single unit.

“We need to get better at offloading,” she said. “Although we won, sometimes we don’t play together as a team as much as we need to. We have work to do.”

The women’s rugby club will play a home game against California State University Sacramento on Feb. 25. 

UCSC Men's Rugby Team after the Ben Quaye Memorial Collegiate Tournament, prepping for their first official game on November 5th. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

The UC Santa Cruz men’s rugby club played nonstop last Saturday, competing in more games at the Ben Quaye Memorial Collegiate Tournament than any other team that day. Six games in six hours.

Held on the Upper East Field, the tournament marked the launch of the fall 2011 rugby season and tested UCSC’s new rookie team. Tournament play meant half the standard rugby period, making them 20 minute halves. The tournament featured Northern California schools including CSU Monterey Bay, San Francisco State, San Jose State and Sierra University.

The tournament was held in rememberance of former UCSC rugby player Ben Quaye, a senior wingback who was found dead due to severe head trauma along Almar Avenue in February of 2010.

Out of a total of six matches UCSC lost five, with the lone win against Cal Poly. UCSC’s rookie team and veteran team alternated matches throughout the day. Coach Jeremy Sanford felt the slugs had not given enough energy on the field to win; In a post-game huddle Sanford addressed both rookies and veterans with encouragement.

“We’ve got to go tooth and nail at all times,” Sanford said.

Freshman inside center Alec Saucedo dislocated his ankle and was off the field for 20 minutes.

Saucedo’s teammates were visibly shaken by his injury. After the tournament, many of the rugby players had a conversation over whether Saucedo would return from injury to play again. Jonny “Tsunami” Lim, a freshman outside center, spoke highly of Saucedo’s character.

“Alec is a good teammate,” Lim said. “He’s always joking around, but in practice he’s intense.”

Medic on duty Dylan Corry evaluated the injuries that occurred Saturday.

“There were more injuries than expected,” he said. “Thankfully I needed to do fewer preventative measures than expected. San Jose State brought some guys to help me.”

For the rookie team, composed of first-season players, rugby is tough to master. Junior winger Graham Churchill said the complexity of rugby’s strategy was especially difficult to grasp.

“Rugby is like a chess game because the strategy is dynamic,” he said. “If we don’t interlock and find each other, we lose the game.”

Churchill noted communication in rugby is key. He felt he was calling plays he was uncomfortable with calling from his position as a winger. In rugby, the player who plays in the center of the field, the fly half, is the play-calling leader on the field.

“It was a little like chaos out there,” Churchill said. “I shouldn’t be yelling out plays. People need to listen to the fly half so we know what to do.”

Freshman lock Noah Stid felt he needed more conditioning. He described himself as tired, having played three games that day. Churchill said he felt he needed to start tackling better.

“I want to hit tackles running,” Churchill said. “I let them [the opposing team] come to me. It’s a rookie mistake.”

The Ben Quaye Memorial Collegiate Tournament also featured awards, given to the most outstanding off-the-field player and to the best rookie player. Jo Witt of SFSU took home the most outstanding off the field award, which depicts exemplary sportsmanship, while UCSC’s own Noah Stid was recognized as the best rookie of the tournament. Stid was shocked when he won the award.

“I didn’t think I would win,” Stid said. “I was really tired in the third game.”

Despite the day’s injuries and losses, team coach Sanford is optimistic the team’s prospects this season.

“Everything needs to be tightened up,” Sanford said. “With so many new players, we’re just getting started. It’s fun. We have a lot of potential.”

The UC Santa Cruz club rugby team will play CSUMB at home on Saturday at 1 p.m.

The women’s rugby team’s weekly practices involve drills and fast-paced scrimmages. After four successful years, women’s rugby is making the transition to being a Division I team in the Northern California Rugby Football Union. Having advanced in league ranking, the team now faces the challenge of operating a Division I team on a limited budget. Photo by Prescott Watson.

The women’s rugby team has done what no team on campus has done before. Despite the lack of both financial support and a varsity title, the team has reached the very top of the sport. Though it is not yet a part of NCAA, the team is now Division I in the Northern California Rugby Football Union, making it UC Santa Cruz’s only Division I team.

After winning two USA Rugby (USAR) Division II National Championships in the last four years, the UCSC women’s rugby team is finally making the big jump into Division I of the Northern California Rugby Football Union (NCRFU).

“We had been expecting it,” Coach Alex McKenzie said. “We had won some titles in the last couple of years, so we figured this would be the next step, although it is a tough step to take.”

This season, the team will be competing in the best division in the country and against some of the strongest sports schools in the state, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, Chico State and UC Davis.

“We’ll be facing schools that are successful and that have more financial support for sports,” said sophomore team captain Maeci Brown. “Those are teams that have recruited their players from high schools.”

While the women’s team will face its biggest challenge yet with its first Division I games in January, the men’s team will be vying for the NCRFU Division II title this year.

Philip Brody, junior president of the rugby club, said that even though the men’s team hasn’t won any championships yet, it can learn from the women’s team’s recent achievement.

“As a team, it’s good to see what it’s like to have a winning tradition,” Brody said. “Having the girls out there working so hard is an example for us. It makes us want to win, too, and that’s our goal this year.”

For both teams, the 40 years of rugby tradition at UCSC has helped them build a sense of school pride toward the university. After all, the rugby club was the first one to call itself the Slugs — but even that hasn’t been enough to gain the distinction of UCSC varsity teams.

As sports clubs, each team receives $3,000 from the university per year.

This money is “pretty much gone by the end of the fall quarter, because of all the trips we have to make [outside of Santa Cruz] to play,” Brown said. “The only bad thing [about not being a varsity team] is that the lack of funding really hurts our growth.”

Because of monetary concerns, the advancement to Division I has not been as cheery as the team would have hoped. Being more competitive calls for a bigger budget that can pay for the preparation a Division I team requires from its players, money that the women’s rugby team does not have.

The men’s rugby team is aware of this necessity, and for that reason, it feels that Division II is the right place for its team at the moment.

“It doesn’t matter whether we’re Division II or Division I, as far as we have a good level of competition,” rugby club junior president Brody said. “And right now, we’re very comfortable being in Division II, because we’re not receiving funding anyway.”

As both teams face a new season next January, the women’s team will continue to work to get good results — both on and off the field.

“This season, we have to be much more committed, which means attending every practice and helping with the fundraising events,” women’s team captain Brown said. “We need to be there for the team, only this time, it has to be 100 percent.”

Although it is still struggling with budget issues and a lack of support, the women’s rugby team is another example of the abilities that exist within UCSC’s sport community. But too often, this success goes unnoticed.

“It would be cool if we could get more people to watch our teams play,” Brody said. “We need to keep emphasizing the importance of college sports. This is our way to celebrate being Slugs.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

UC Santa Cruz has many club teams, but only few as successful as the women’s rugby club.

The team headed to Florida for USA Rugby’s 2010 Collegiate Playoffs during the weekend of April 17 and 18, defeating La Salle University and Slippery Rock University to earn their place as one of the final four teams left competing for the title.

While the girls are now enjoying many triumphs in their post-season conquest, there has been no shortage of challenges along the way.

In 2006, the women’s rugby team brought home the national title, beating Plymouth State University in the finals. The following year, Santa Cruz returned to the finals, and placed as runner-ups, second to Iowa State.

“This club is definitely built on successes of the past,” Head Coach Alex McKenzie said. “We’re consistently successful in league play if not in the playoffs every year.”

The team’s run during last season carried them to Regionals, but at the end of the year, the girls said goodbye to many members.

“Last year, we lost about eight to nine seniors, some in very key positions,” Coach Courtney Warner said.

While the loss of the graduating players could have been problematic, the remaining girls have stepped up to fill the empty shoes.

“The younger players have really helped,” McKenzie said. “They’re dedicated, very motivated, and that passes on to their teammates.”

Through the season, the women of the rugby team have proven that they’ve come into their own even without the leaders of last year.

This season the team went undefeated in league play, making it loud and clear that Santa Cruz was not backing down.

Only recently did the Slugs suffer their first loss of the season, to Washington State University during the regional playoffs.

“The first loss of the season was a wake-up call,” McKenzie said. “It helped reform us, reminded us that we need to take it seriously, [that] we need as much time together as possible.”

The girls take their game seriously, which is evident in the hours they spend practicing on Lower East Field.

“The team puts in a lot of dedication, a lot of hard work,” first-year Anne Mari Bowlus said. “We’ve [been practicing] since the beginning of the year.”

Endless days of practice and an inner intensity elevates their love of the game.

“It makes you appreciate what you and your teammates go through to get there,” second-year Alyssa Heckin said.

As a club sport at UCSC, money is hard to come by, but the girls are doing what they can to cover the costs. The rugby team frequently tables on sunny days at Quarry Plaza, holds fundraisers at Woodstock’s Pizza, and asks for donations.

“It’s frustrating when we can’t get funding,” Warner said. “It does get expensive. It all goes without saying, rugby is an expensive hobby.”

Coach Warner finds the effort put forth from all the girls an impressive feat.

“What I’ve seen out of these girls show how driven they are,” Warner said. “They train a lot, and that’s even more stress piled on top of jobs and classes. It definitely brings it to a new level of commitment.”

With the girls heading to Stanford for Championship Weekend at the end of April, the team feels that their regular-season success will prepare them once they hit the fields to represent Santa Cruz’s finest.