Club News

Arroyo Grande, CA - After traveling up to face the women of San Luis Obispo, the Santa Monica Women’s team got another win under their belt Saturday morning.  In the pouring rain, the ladies came away with a convincing victory, running in an impressive 11 tries (12 by our count) to take the W, 69-0.

With the picturesque rolling hills of Arroyo Grande, CA in the background, the Lady Phins put on a running show in open field and played rugby like it’s supposed to be played: In rain or shine. Even in the drab conditions, the backs had a field day in the open field, scoring eight of the eleven tries, as San Luis Obispo was unable to field 15 players. With SLO playing with two players down, Santa Monica made sure to capitalize on the overlap. The ladies were quick to go for the jugular, scoring in the first 4 minutes of play. The quick score set the bar for the intensity they wanted to establish for the game.  Impressively, the team was able to sustain that intensity even when the cold, wet conditions affected ball-handling. Needless to say the forwards from both teams had a lot of scrum practice during the game. Ramine “The Afterburner” Cromartie (a new-comer to the team) had an excellent game, calling switches and demonstrating some serious speed and skills out on the Wing. For her efforts, she got a couple of trips over the try-line, scoring a pair of tries in her first game with Santa Monica. Another stand-out performance in the back-line came from Carmen Requena at Scrum-Half. By directing traffic behind the ruck, shooting the gap for her own 50-yard-dash to score and even having a go at a box kick from behind the scrum, Requena showed she has what it takes to step into that position after the back-line shuffled a little and last season’s starting scrum-half, Emily Birdwhistell moved to Fly-Half. Requena’s efforts also garnered her Back of the Match honors.

It just keeps on coming! Whitney Vance picked up where she left off from the Tuscon match last Saturday and showed the outstanding leadership and prowess on the field the team has come to expect whenever she takes the pitch. Vance motored through, around and past the SLO defense to lead all try-scorers with four (they only counted three) trips over the try-line. Vance had fun with the boot too, as she went 7 out of 11 with her conversions. Last but not least for the backs, it was business as usual for the Burner (Andrea Staid for the uninformed). The speed demon got her share of points for Santa Monica as well with her own duo of tries.

Moving on to the more important players on the team, the story of the match is in the forwards. After a complete position change, only two trainings and a five minute binding/scrumming session at the end of practice Thursday, the Santa Monica Women’s Rugby team has a new Hooker and she is a force to be reckoned with. Her name is Carol Fabrizio. C-Fab was a monster in the scrum. The statistics are not official but with C-Fab’s deadly hook, the Santa Monica scrum dominated the bigger SLO pack and won close to every ball. Fabrizio fought hard for every single ball put-in and showed great trust in her props, holding on tight and at times using both feet to go for the ball. She ran hard, hit hard and displayed a natural inclination to running in the forward pack. One cannot communicate how great of a job she did with such little time and opportunity to prepare and learn such a specialized position. For her outstanding performance she was rightfully honored with Forward of the Match. As for the rest of the pack, flashes of unity and brilliance were all over the place. With Fabrizio and some minor adjustments, there was a marked improvement in their scrumming (the Phins at times coming away with a steal by simply pushing the SLO scrum off the ball). Support play has improved and there was a better showing of forwards to make it to the breakdowns to get clean ball to the backs. The try-scorers for the forwards were Nicole “Q” Garcea and Te Awhina Ho Chee. Q’s try was great: Reading the defense and going blind-side off a Santa Monica scrum with an Eight-Man pick. Shrugging off three defenders, she slid into the try-zone to score. Te scored a try in each half. Stretching out to score both times, each try came after a quick tap as she was able capitalize off of SLO’s sluggish defense.

IRB 7’s interrupts division play for the Women’s side this weekend; however, training will go on as scheduled to prepare to run it back against SLO for a home game at Daniel Webster Middle School on February  20th.

Player Camp:
On Saturday, 30+ players traveled up to Leo Carrillo State Beach and Park to attend an all day camp. The weather complied for the most part and we had an overwhelmingly success experience. Every player grew in his knowledge of rugby and of how we intend to play this season. More importantly, the guys grew together as a team. We capped the day off with a trail run up to the top of one of the hills, then back down to the beach for a quick dip in the ocean, and finished with a team bar-b-q. Though the weather was cold and rainy, the guys embraced the adversity and made the most of it.

OPSB:
Following a physically demanding Saturday, we faced RSL team Old Puget Sound Beach from Seattle in a Sunday friendly. Unfortunately, lack of accountability by several members of the team lead to late arrivals to the field, which meant that Coach Lewis would shuffle his line-up from the one that had trained together the day before. OPSB signaled their intentions early by electing to take a penalty from 40 meters out within the first 5 minutes of the match. Alternately, when we had a kickable penalty a few minutes later, I elected to kick to the corner and go for a line-out. We had 2 successive mauls end with penalties against OPSB but were unable to finish off the 3rd line-out with either a try or yellow-card against the opposition.

From that point onward, the half went back-and-forth between the 22’s with neither side showing a great deal of polish. OPSB would score a soft-try on a poorly covered clearance kick where the Dolphins defense simply failed to cover the near sideline. The Seattle team would close out the half with a second penalty goal for a score line of 0-11.

The second half would feature a mixture of first- and second-side players as Coach Lewis continued to search for solid personnel combinations. We would give-up a couple more soft tries in the half but finally broke through in the last 5 minutes as flyhalf Robert Kremer would find a gap on the outside of his defender, slip through and offload to Kelly Serfoss for a try in the corner. Final score: Santa Monica – 8 : OPSB – 26.

While we improved significantly week-over-week, we have a long way to go in terms of our understanding of the game and how Coach Lewis wants us to play. Our situational decision making needs to improve a lot if we plan to contend in this league. Beyond that, we need to, as a team, gain a hunger for the try line. We did several things well in the game but let too many scoring opportunities go begging.

Bobby Hacker:
For those who didn’t catch the news last week, Bobby Hacker has agreed to work with the men’s team as an assistant coach. Bobby comes over from the women’s team, where he took them to the D2 national playoffs. We’re very happy to have him working with us and appreciate his willingness to coach us.

This Week:
• The men and women will participate in a clinical study sponsored by Gatorade. The project attempts to assess the positive effects of an ingredient in G2 on neurological activity. Volunteers will undergo an initial cognitive skills assessment on Saturday, take a regular daily dosage of G2, and then get monitored should they sustain a concussion at any point during the season.
• IRB 7’s in Las Vegas

New players:
• Josh Diamond: Josh moved to the Westside a couple years ago and is getting back into playing rugby after spending his collegiate rugby career at Duke.

Gents,

Here are the fixtures that we have so far:

2/27 Home vs LA Rugby and others

3/13 Home vs Santa Barbara Fossils (Over 40s)–CLUB DAY!

3/27 @ Huntington Beach - TBC

4/10 or 4/24 Home vs ??? - TBC

5/1-5/2 Catalina Rugby Festival

5/15-5/16 Golden Gate Tournament

We are currently working on the “TBC” dates and will notify you guys of what they are going to be when we have something concrete.

There are those two tournaments in the spring. Let us figure out availability and which one we are going to win!!!!  Let me know.

By the way, it is worth pointing out that we have not lost a game since 2008!  Let’s keeping it going!

Thanks

Adam