Men's rugby has strong spring

According to 21-year-old Adam Medeiros, the spring men's rugby season is used as a building tool for the team. "It's usually used as a developmental type of season," said the junior athletic training major from Fairhaven, Mass.

"A lot of young freshmen get a lot more playing time than they would in the fall," Medeiros said, "and new players come and learn the game and they get a lot of experience."
In order to prepare for the fall, the team is "using what the upperclassmen know to help all the new kids and freshmen that are coming out to play in the spring," said Bryon Stueber, 21, a junior criminal justice major from Orlando, Fla.

The spring season starts immediately after students return from winter break. "We start with lifts three times a week and one day a week we have a full practice in Shapiro," Medeiros said.

"We lift until the snow melts," Stueber said. "Then we start practicing outside." The team begins playing other teams again when April comes around.

"In the spring we usually play four or five games and one tournament," Medeiros said.
"We take the spring season seriously," Stueber said. "We enter tournaments and help the younger guys prepare for the fall."

This spring, the men's rugby team traveled down to Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia Collegiate Rugby Tournament.

"We made it all the way to the final game and got second in our division out of 10 teams," Medeiros said. "We played five games, only losing in the final game to a Division I program."

The team ended its spring season with six wins and three losses. The last game helped the team close the season on a good note, defeating Dartmouth College's JV team 47-5 on a snowy April 27, according to www.norwichathletics.com.

With the spring season ending, the players now look forward to the fall season. They will return to campus for preseason two weeks before classes begin.

"My expectations for next fall are to go further in the playoffs than we did this year," Stueber said. "So as we lose some of our seniors, we need the younger kids to step up."

"We'll be playing seven teams in our conference, three of which made it to nationals," Medeiros said.

"It's going to be tough," Medeiros said, "but I feel with the outcome of this spring and who's returning this fall, we could take the whole conference and go all the way to nationals."