at Santa Cruz Slugfest Tournament
The SCUTs started the season with the annual trip over the hill to the tournament with arguably the best view inthe West - UCSC’s Slugfest. We fielded two sides for a total of 6 games with around 15 players new to rugby. The SCUTs red team went 3 and 0 and the SCUTs white team went 0 and 3.
Here the report by Bryant Byrnes on pelicanrefs.com:
Santa Cruz Slugfest. A cool clear fall day at arguably the prettiest venued pitch in NorCal. Seven college sides, five refs, many matches. A really nice season curtain raiser for all involved.
Host UCSC and tourney director Scott Carson did themselves proud. The fields were in great shape, a trainer was provided, food and shelter for the refs. The trainer was especially appreciated because when a player seemed to serious problems she was on it immediately. (The fellow ultimately was fine and was able to spectate the rest of the tourney.)
In that it was the Slugfest, it was free form rather than formal brackets. Santa Clara’s firsts (SCUTs red team) and a greatly revitalized San Jose State were undefeated. A new D2 team (at least new to me) Sierra College, made a good showing.
Report by Eric Rauscher from pelicanrefs.com:
Second game: USF 27 – Santa Clara (SCUTs white) 17
This was a close, hard fought back and forth game. The second half got a bit testy with some hand-bag stuff after a break-down. A player from USF came in and threw a punch. Much whistle blowing. Call captains over, tell them to settle their guys down. Yellow card the USF player. From then on play was clean and crisp. Later in the day a USF player told me that they really wanted to win that one (presumably because of the first game). I relayed that winning is one thing, but discipline is more important.
Third game: SIERRA JC 29 – Santa Clara (SCUTS white) 24
By far the best game of the day for me. The scoring was high and back and forth. With only 2 min left in the game and the score tied 24/24, Sierra pushed the ball towards Santa Clara in a steady way and won the game, but it just as well may have gone the other way. A great game to end a great day of rugby.