By Alfonso De Falco
Staff Writer
The St. Bonaventure University rugby team will be hosting their annual 7s tournament this Saturday. This is the second annual tournament the team will be hosting.
Head coach Andrew “Tui” Osborne came up with the idea last year in hopes of gaining exposure for the program.
“7s is a passion of mine, and we have a couple of athletes on the team that can excel in this version of the game. I think it is important that 7s is played in the spring because it is competitive for us because now that rugby is in the Olympics, it keeps the guys in shape and something for our program to strive for,” said Osborne.
“With all these competitions, like Nationals, the CRCs and any other national tournament, I feel like it is important for us to be competing at the highest level,” he continued.
Along with St. Bonaventure, Wheeling Jesuit University, Kutztown University, University at Buffalo and St. Joseph’s University will be participating in this event while St. Bonaventure, Buffalo and Kutztown will each be bringing a second side also, totaling eight teams.
Osborne said he is excited for this year’s tournament.
“We have a couple of teams (Wheeling Jesuit and Kutztown) that were not in it originally last year that will join on Saturday to make it more competitive,” said Osborne.
After winning the tournament last year, Bonnies sophomore Eamonn Matthews is looking forward to participating in it once again this year.
“I’m very excited about the tournament coming up. It’s another home tournament. We did it for the first time last year and won it last year, so we’re really hoping to repeat the success,” said Matthews. “It’s another opportunity for us to do something on the campus to get involved with and to put the Bonaventure rugby name in a positive image.”
However, Matthews mentioned the youth of this year’s team might be a disadvantage.
“We graduated a lot of seniors, so we are a lot younger than last year, which showed at our last tournament in Vegas, where there were a couple of mistakes we made that if we had more experienced guys, it could have helped and been avoidable,” said Matthews.
“Were looking to clean up some of the little mistakes we made in Vegas and just capitalize on other teams mistakes a little better and hopefully put our game plan a little better.” Matthews continued.
Matthews mentioned that Kutztown University will be a tough matchup.
“Year in and year out, they are nationally ranked in the top five when it comes to 7s, so we are really excited and looking forward to playing against them,” said Matthews.
Osborne agreed, but also mentioned to watch other fellow D1A Rugby East Conference opponents, such as Wheeling Jesuit and Buffalo in the tournament.
“It will be tougher than last year for our guys for sure, obviously because Kutztown is ranked top five in the nation. They’ll be out to show us what they have. Wheeling as well, we can’t count them out and University at Buffalo also because, they have been training hard.”
Sophomore Matthew Bergstol is excited to face St. Joseph’s because of his connection with the school.
“I’m looking forward to going against St. Joseph’s University. My brother attended there and I know the coach personally,” said Bergstol.
Despite being a small tournament, Osborne is excited for Saturday and is already looking toward the future in regard to this yearly tournament.
“Next year, we will try to look to expand to other teams. There is a lot going on outside of this tournament this weekend, which in turn ruled out a couple of teams we wanted to come this year. The lesson to take on moving forward is to try to see what other teams are doing and build on that,” said Osborne.
Each team has a total of 12 players on the roster and seven are on the field at the same time. Each game consists of two, seven minute halves and a two minute halftime in between. The championship final (the Cup) is bumped up to 10 minute halves.
There will be two pools with four teams in each pool and each team plays each other in pool play.
From there, a point system will determine which teams will then be the top four teams to participate in either the Cup, (1st place) or the Bowl (5th place) playoffs.
If a team loses in the semifinal of the Cup, they play for the Plate (3rd place) and the losers of the Bowl semifinal will play in the Shield final (7th place).
The first game for Saturday is scheduled for 11 a.m. at Marra Athletic Fields Complex, between the St. Bonaventure first team and Wheeling Jesuit. The Cup final is scheduled for 5:40 p.m.
defalcaa13@bonaventure.edu
