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The Pitt State Men’s Rugby Club fell to Tulsa Men’s Club in a home game this past weekend on Saturday, Feb. 16 (19-51).
Despite their rocky start to the season, team captain Ty Goss believes the team “played well.”
“Despite the score line, I think we did pretty good especially for our first game,” Goss said. “Tulsa’s always a very strong club (and) they are always really tough to beat… We have never actually beat them that I can remember in club history… It is always hard to have a cold game as your first game (because) playing cold games just sucks. It is never fun especially with as much ice as there was on the ground. For the situation and the circumstances, I think we played really well. We learned a lot on what we need to work on.”
Club president Grant Schultz agrees that the team did well.
“We have a lot of new guys out right now and it was really cold; what we did well is just showed up and we played,” Schultz said. “We played a men’s club, so they are all guys who have probably played in college and continued playing after they graduated. So, what we did well is we really did not get intimidated by the fact that they have a lot more experience and a lot of size on us.”
The club is preparing for their next tournament and will be working a lot on defense, according to Schultz.
“Well, we are going to the Mardi Gras tournament, so we will have three matches there,” Schultz said. “… Our expectation is to prove our defense. We still made it to the score line with a decent amount of points, enough points to win a match but we gave up too many points. So, we will look to improve our defense and play a little bit more clean.”
Goss also recognized that the clubs defense needs some “fine tuning.”
“…As we learned today… you actually have to make tackles in rugby,” Goss said. “There is a reason why it has such a violent reputation and I think our newer guys found that out first hand. So, the biggest thing will be working on our defense and looking to improve that in our next game.”
There are several new players in the club and according to Schultz, they played “well, despite losing.”
“We had 11 players play their first game this Saturday (Feb. 16),” Schultz said. “There was five freshman who started (and) four sophomores who started. We are very young, and I think the guys did a very good job of rising to the occasion of playing older, more experienced players. They (don’t) think it right now, that they did very well, but they actually did really well and that will pay off for them in the future.”
Goss sees potential within the club and looks forward to seeing everyone improve and come together as a team.
“… We are a very young team (with) a lot of new guys, but the chemistry is there for sure,” Goss said. “There will be a lot of building up off of each other (and) looking to improve off of each other…”
