This weekend, the Arizona’s men’s varsity rugby team defeated the University of New Mexico 46-19. The UA’s junior varsity team also came out with a win, defeating UNM 27-7. The UA men’s fifteens team remains undefeated in its preseason.
“We had a great game today and a lot of young guys stepped up today,” UA rugby assistant coach Andrew Brischke said. “We played a lot of freshmen like we did last week,”
Brischke coached the fifteens team this weekend while head coach Sean Duffy was coaching the sevens team at the Pac-12 Conference West Coast Sevens Tournament at San Jose State.
During the first home game on Saturday, freshmen Ben Joseph and Mason Pederson, sophomores Kyle Tippit and Dacoda Worth and seniors Shane Carter, Luke Dubas and Matt Tomasetti all scored to secure the win over UNM.
During the second game of the day, Arizona’s JV team played against many of the same players that played in the varsity round.
The Wildcats played in front of a full crowd filled with UA and UNM fans at the Rincon Sports Complex for Family Weekend.
“A big theme of today was playing like brothers, playing like family,” Brischke said. “Coach Sitton was a father figure to many of us and he taught us to play like a family.”
To culminate the sweep against UNM, the teams had a joint tailgate prior to Arizona’s football game against USC late Saturday.
Despite the fifteens’ great successes thus far in the preseason, the sevens team struggled to come out on top to win the West Coast Sevens Tournament. Arizona made it to the Plate Semifinals with two wins and two losses,but UCLA ultimately took the win, beating Cal 14-10 in the National Anthem Championship Final.
In the first game of the first round of the tournament, Arizona dominated San Jose State, beating the host team 26-0. In the second game of the first round, Cal held Arizona to zero points, overpowering the team 40-0.
Despite Arizona’s big loss against the Golden Bears, the team was able to come out on top with a win in the second-round post-pool play over San Diego State 26-12.
Like Cal, ASU held the UA to zero points, beating the team 24-0 in Arizona’s final match of the tournament.
The team’s next tournament will be Nov. 8-9 at the Pac-12 Sevens Tournament at Cal Berkeley.
The next home game will be a fifteens match at Dave Sitton Field against Grand Canyon University on Nov. 21 at 7 p.m.
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