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Rugby teams fall again

BY CHRIS OWENS

In print | October 5, 2006

It may not have been raining on Cunningham Field this past Saturday morning, but it certainly was in the hearts of the Swarthmore men’s and women’s rugby teams.

In the first game of the morning, the Swarthmore women’s A Team entered combat against the women of St. Joseph’s, who stormed the field clad in red and black like the ghosts of Duritti’s column, ready to give us all the conclusion we had always dreamed of for the Spanish Civil War. The Hawks scored several times before Heather Hightower ’09 scored a try for Swarthmore just before the end of the first half, her second of the season.

Still, even Hightower’s audacity could not calm the tide of unrest as the Black-and-Reds scored several times again in the second half, stabbing the oval ball into the pitch like a spike into the heart of global capitalism. Swarthmore Mariel Feigen ‘10 was able to touch the ball down inside the visiting squad’s try-zone. Yet, as Marx himself predicted, it was too little too late. All that was holy was profaned; all that was solid had already melted into air. The final score was 10 points for the women of Swarthmore and 41 for visiting St. Joe’s. That’s right, before y’all had woken from your Friday-night hangovers, el Presidente del Mundo Nuevo Hugo Chavez had already hailed the victory as a “triumph for the Bolivarian Revolution.”

Not dismayed, the Swarthmore women’s B Team suited up like so many Parisian militiamen ready to massacre the Commune and any rugby team associated with it. “We did well with rucking, we were fast and we played well,” Caroline Grubbs ‘07 said. But seeking violence like only Pinkerton Thugs can, Grubbs remarked on the number of injuries during the game by saying that “nothing fun happened.” The ending score was a tie, with one try scored by Tiffany McCarthy ’09 and another by St. Joe’s, leaving it at 5-5. Giving a general summary of the battle against Swarthmore, St Joseph’s sophomore Kelly Farber said, “Swarthmore had their [stuff] together … but we are a good team.”

After the women had cleared the field, the Swarthmore men’s A Team entered into its own less revolutionary struggle against visiting Lafayette College from Easton, Pa. This game proved to be slightly more interesting, as both teams “fought tooth and nail,” according to Cailen O’Brien ‘09. Each try scored by the opposition was matched by Swarthmore’s Mark Ferrara ’08 and by two non-college local ruggers. Yet for each try it scored, Swarthmore missed the opportunity to complete a conversion or a kick and therefore had to settle for 15 points. Lafayette, on the other hand, was able to score both a kick and a conversion respectively on its tries, earning a 21-15 win. The team was nonetheless pleased with its tenacity. “We fought hard, till the very end,” Luke Rampersad ’10 said.

The men’s B Team did not play this weekend for a lack of players.

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