USU women’s rugby nabs gratifying victory over Salt Lake club team
After losing two close games to the Salt Lake club team in the fall, the Utah State women’s rugby club was confident it was due for a breakthrough victory against the Slugs.
The Aggies got just that as Brooke Lambert and Lindsey Lovell found the goal line in the second half, and the Aggie defense limited the Slugs to one try in USU’s 12-7 win Saturday on the HPER Field.
Utah State’s victory was especially gratifying for Lovell, who said the Aggies have only beaten the Slugs one other time in her three seasons on the club.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve beaten Salt Lake,” she said. “To beat Salt Lake was a very big thing for us.”
After finishing in second place at the Division II Pacific Coast Playoffs (PCP) a week ago, insider center Becca Ogden said the team was playing with a lot of confidence heading into Saturday.
In addition to this, she said the tournament served as a great tune-up for USU’s game against the Slugs, because Salt Lake and the team USU lost to at the PCP, San Jose State, play a similar brand of rugby – a physical brand.
Lovell agreed and said playing the Spartans helped prepare USU’s undersized front line to counter Salt Lake’s much bigger counterparts.
“Our forwards kind of knew how to deal with physical play, and so it definitely helped us know what to do. They usually kill us with their weight,” she said. “[However] a lot of it is if we just get low, and I think that is what we did, they just fell over.”
But it took a little while, as both defenses dominated play in the first half. Utah State had a couple of scoring opportunities early in the first half, and Salt Lake, a couple late in the first half, but the score remained deadlocked at 0-0 at the half.
Like the beginning of the first stanza, the Aggies captured the momentum early in the second half when Ogden came within five yards of scoring, after knifing her way through the Slug defense.
USU capitalized a couple of minutes later when Lambert scored up the middle. The Aggies missed the point-after kick, and had to settle for a 5-0 lead.
Midway through the second half, the Aggies struck again when Lovell found daylight on the right side of the field and out-sprinted the Slug defense from about 25 yards out.
Ogden’s point-after kick gave USU a 12-0 lead.
“The whole side of the field was open to me and I just took off and went,” she said of the try. “It was just good, clean play by our forwards to get the ball out.”
It was this type of lateral passing that gave the Aggies an upper hand all game long, Lovell said.
“I think our ability to be full-speed when catching the ball really killed them, and made us harder to tackle,” she said.
-jasonwturner@cc.usu.edu