 "Photo: Courtesy of Meghan Curti")
The Delaware women's rugby team is going to the Final Four.
After a weekend in sunny Florida as the No. 7 team in the tournament, the Hens returned home having secured their place in the national semifinals in California by defeating the University of Central Florida and Slippery Rock University 24-15 and 24-21, respectively, in the quarterfinal round.
This year marks the first time in the program's 16-year history that the team has advanced to the round of 16, and now they find themselves on the brink of the national championship game.
"I feel like this isn't really happening," senior captain Brittany Campli said. "I keep saying 'pinch me.' It's awesome."
To advance, the team had to beat UCF on Friday in a hotly contested match that saw the Hens trailing 15-14 before scoring two tries late in the game to seal the victory. A try is a five-point score, similar to a touchdown in football, achieved by pushing the ball into the ground in your opponent's try zone with your arms or upper body.
The matches defining moment was a late game three-minute goal line stand by the Hens to prevent an important score. Delaware eventually won the ball back and kicked it back to midfield. They scored the go ahead try minutes later.
"If they had scored when we made that goal line stand, that might have been a back-breaker," Backs Coach Mike McClay said.
Their next match against No. 2 Slippery Rock on Saturday was an intense match that saw Slippery Rock open the scoring two minutes into the game before Delaware evened the match at five before half time. Two minutes into the second half, Slippery Rock scored again, only to watch as the Hens surged ahead and held the lead despite a late challenge.
"We were able to bounce back and score,"McClay said. "We took their best shot and kept coming back in both games. So many of them played so well."
Senior Kim Lane produced four long runs over the weekend, providing the team with much of the offense it would need to get into the next round. According to McClay, Lane is being considered for the All-American team for her play this season.
This year the team focused on conditioning as they tried to improve, and the results have paid off.
"We've made major improvements," Campli said. "We've worked so hard. We've been running and doing push-ups like crazy. We've been preparing the whole season."
She said that conditioning becomes a factor when the team plays in tournaments in which they are playing two 80- minute matches in two days.
However, their physical toughness was not the biggest factor this weekend. The team's mental tenacity helped them to overcome early deficits and potential pitfalls.
"We were so focused. Honestly, nothing could stop us," Campli said. "In years past, we had a problem because we would get down on ourselves and would have a hard time turning it around, but we're mentally all there this semester. We had so much heart. It was 85 degrees and we just kept fighting to the every end."
Co-captain Laurel Rockwood echoed Campli's sentiments, saying the team did a great job maintaining a level head during this tournament.
"This is the first time that we have been down and come back and won the game," Rockwood said. "Usually we get down on ourselves, but this tournament we stayed positive the entire game and now we're going out to California."
Delaware's potential opponents in the final four include Stonehill College and Washington State, neither of which Delaware has ever played before, but Rockwood does not believe that puts Delaware at a disadvantage.
"I love playing teams we've never played before. We can go out and play our game and not worry about, 'oh that player's really good,' he said. We tend to play better that way."
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