PSU Men's Rugby - 2019 Fall Recap

University Park, PA – The Penn State Men’s Rugby team ended the Fall conference season 4-5 and third in the Rugby East Conference -an unfamiliar place for the Lions who had a tough back-loaded schedule and finished the season with 4 of those 5 losses to ranked opponents.

While finishing this way is not what the team was looking for, there were certainly a lot of good moments and quality learning points from the 2019 Fall Campaign- items the team knows they can work on and come back better and stronger for the Spring Season. We took 16 new players this year on the team and it was great to see a lot of these players getting some quality minutes throughout the Fall season. These players gaining valuable 1st Team minutes as Freshman will certainly pay off down the road.

The Fall season started off with a tough match against Trinity College from Dublin, Ireland. Being one of the better collegiate teams in Europe, we knew it was going to be a real test. It was a great game and our team got to play against a well-drilled, skilled squad, which is something that we don’t necessarily see a lot of every year. After this test we followed up with 4 wins in a row, 3 against conference opponents (Notre Dame College, Mary Washington, and St. Bonaventure) and one non-conference against Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth match was a special one as we hosted it during well-attended Friends and Family weekend and also welcomed former Head Coach James Willocks back to Happy Valley. Our annual Friends and Family dinner was a huge success and with fundraising in the forefront, we were able to kick-off our campaign to “Level the Playing Field.” Thanks to some generous gifts from Alumni and Parents alike we were able to get going on growing the funding for the program. One gift in particular we are very thankful for was the ’99 Men’s team committed $99,000 over the next 3 years. We also had a number of current parents make additional commitments to the program over the weekend. These fundraising efforts and the commitments of numerous parents once again allowed the team to enjoy the services of Alex Corbisiero and Damien Hill throughout the season and allowed us to bring in Luke Lewis to help our lineout and throwing for a week late in the fall. It is always great to have the support throughout the year!

Riding a high from our event and the following week’s win over St. Bonaventure, we were poised to finish strong. Unfortunately, we were unable to put some things together late and fell to 2 conference opponents (Kutztown and Army) and 2 non-conference opponents (Navy and Davenport) to finish the fall season. As mentioned, we certainly learned a lot from these losses and the team is ready to come back better in the Spring.

Off the back of some great games and great performances over the Fall season the following players were recognized for their efforts and these are certainly well deserved. Each of the players mentioned below, and many more, put in a number of tough hours to make sure they were performing on field.

Opponents & Results

Trinity College, Dublin - 17-69

Notre Dame College, 31-25

University of Mary Washington, 22-0

Dartmouth College, 23-18

St. Bonaventure, 43-20

Kutztown University, 24-34

Davenport, 17-49

Navy, 12-38

Army, 14-31

RUGBY EAST ALL-CONFERENCE

1st TEAM

Mike Jennings ‘21

Peter Jean ‘21

Jesse Capriotti ‘22

2ND TEAM

John O’Toole ‘23

Tom Capriotti ‘20

Joey Freeman ‘20 

Dalton Musselman ‘23

HONORABLE MENTION

Anthony Adamcheck ‘21

Brendan Collum’20

Freshman Player of the Year: Dalton Musselman '23

With the Fall now far in our rearview mirrors, we shift focus to the Spring Playoff and sevens seasons. The Spring as many know is an interesting time as we prepare for a playoff run in April but must also prep for a 7s season simultaneously. In the past we have been able to wait to prepare for 7swith the CRC being the culminating 7s event. However that has dropped away this year and been replaced by a true National 7s Championship on the same weekend in May. This means that the team must now qualify for the tournament while also focusing on competing for the 15s title. This will be a challenging endeavor, but one that I know the team will show up for when the time comes.

We have a few matches scheduled already: on March 21 we will travel to Army and on March 28 Life University will make the trip to Happy Valley. The first round for Playoffs for 15s will be played on April 11 with the opponent and venues being decided later in the Spring.

We once again will be hosting our Winter Clinic February 22-23. We are looking forward to having a couple hundred high school players on campus learning from our players and getting to see what Penn State Rugby is all about and what makes it such a great place to come and play.

We thank you for all your support throughout the year and wish everyone a very wonderful new year!