Women’s rugby team beats SLC Slugs

A strong second half pushed the Utah State women’s rugby team to a 28-12 win over the Salt Lake City slugs Saturday at the HPER field.

The Aggies opened the second period with 21 consecutive points after finishing the first half with only a two-point lead.

“We played like a team in the second half,” Aggie Amy Armstong said. “We were talking a lot more and we were working on support.”

Head coach Michele Olpin said USU played well in the second half, but could have played better.

“That was the best they’ve played so far,” she said. “The team did a lot of things pretty well. But there’s a lot of room for improvement.”

Olpin said she was not surprised to see the Aggies take a big lead in the second half.

“Not to take anything away from the team, but SLC gets tired,” she said. “If it were any other team, we wouldn’t have scored three times in a row.”

Brooke Lambert had two trys and fullback Makenzie Rausten had her first score of the season.

“I had never scored so it’s very exciting,” Rausten said. “We were doing really bad at running sideways so I ran straight up the field.”

The win comes after a disappointing tournament last weekend in Boise in which USU lost two games in overtime.

“We tried not to focus on it too much,” Olpin said. “Those were messy games that we came out on the losing side of.”

The Aggies scored first when Lambert blocked and caught a Slug punt in the try zone, but then USU allowed the Slugs to drive right back and get a try of their own to cut its lead to 7-5.

“We tend to get up by five and think we’ve won the game,” Olpin said. “That kind of happened today.”

USU led 28-5 before allowing SLC to get a try. The Slugs were driving down the field again when the game ended.

“I wasn’t worried about losing,” Olpin said. “But I was pissed that we were getting scored on.”

Rausten said she was not worried about surrendering the momentum at the end of the game.

“We were on such a rush then we lost our focus,” she said. “We had most of the control most of the time.”

USU will play in Provo against BYU next Saturday.

Last time the Ags faced BYU, they won 10-3 in overtime.

-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu