Coyotes Open With Inter Squad Scrimmage

The USD Women's Rugby Team started their Fall season today. With a hand full of vets unavailable and a lot of rookies not able to play it was impressive that the Coyotes were able to put out two full squads for their inter squad scrimmage. The day started with a scrum session for the rookie forwards while the new backs worked on re-alignment skills.

Squads were mixed with vets taking key positions on both teams and rookies filling in the blanks. With competitive scrums and better than average lineouts the set pieces looked very good. The backs were able to move the ball out to the wings and there were several good breaks by both sides. The game was played end to end but the white squad benefited from some breakaways and ran out 17-0 winners.

The Coyotes play in the great Plains League and next Saturday they open the league season at home against the Creighton Women Bluejays.

Big Turnout For First Practice

What a great turnout for the first practice of the season. The ice rink looked so small as we filled it with 40+ players. The new players were clearly a fun group of talented women and it looks like we have even more players signed up who were unable to come out on Tuesday.

We may have to add a rookie scrimmage to the schedule so that all the new players can get into a game situation prior to the start of the season. More info to follow.

Coach Bryn's Summer

So the summer was packed with rugby for Head Coach Bryn Chivers. Bryn is also the Head Coach of the USA U20 Women's National Team and this summer they participated in two big events.

In June the team traveled to Pittsburgh and participated in the USA Rugby U23 National All Star Championships and came away with wins against the SoCal U23's and West U23's.

This was a a warm up for their July tour to England where the participated in the Women;s U20 Nations Cup, a tournament for National teams. They played exceptionally well and beat Wales and Canada to make it to the final where they lost to England, the defending champions. You can read about the tour on the U19 Girls Rugby blog
http://u19womensrugby.blogspot.com/

Great End To A Not So Great Season

With tries by Darla Brandt (3), Sarah Permann and Tracy Elsen and one conversion by Lindsey Lefkow the Coyotes ended the season with a convincing 27-7 win against the Augustana Women. The highlight of the day was certainly the remarkable try by Permann who took a pass off a ruck in the USD half, threw an outrageous dummy pass that confused the defenders, shot through the gap and then pinned her ears back to go fifty yards to the goal line. The crowd went wild.

It was a great end to a tough season for the USD Women's Rugby Club who struggled through a series of cancelled games that certainly negatively impacted the team. The good news is that the core of the team will be returning and with the addition of a new group of rookies the team will be in very good shape in the fall.