Harbus

Issue date: 10/15/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Randy Goldstein (ND) The team stands victorious after winning the Hogfest tournament.

The HBS Rugby team continued it's undefeated season by winning the annual Wharton School of Finance "Hogfest" rugby tournament over the weekend of October 6th and 7th. The team was hungry after last years close loss to Wharton in the tournament finals. Harvard was in the drivers seat the entire weekend and their complete domination was clear in the weekend scoring total of Harvard: 172, all opponents: 3.

The tournament started on Saturday. It was a hot day and the fields were very dry. HBS came to recapture their title and do it in a convincing fashion. The team was without several of their top players, including Dave Fielding (OD), Al Rowe (OD), and Carter Gaffney (OB). Harvard's first match was against NYU Stern. The forwards pounded the ball up and drew in defenders, creating overlaps on the outside that the backs were able to exploit all game. Try scorers included Randy Goldstein (ND), Mike Lloyd (HLS), Matt Tambiah (MIT '09), Marco "Italian Stallion" Di Falco (NG), and Liam Patrick. Harvard took the match easily with a final score of 52-0.

The Harvard A-side's second match of the day was against Wharton's B-Side. Wharton included several of their first side players in this match in the vein hope of slowing the Harvard jugger-naught but it was to no avail. Patrick scored the first try, taking the ball from Brendan Whitworth (OJ) after the forwards pounded the ball up the field. The second try was a thing of beauty - Di Falco picked the ball up off a scrum, offloaded to Chris Trimble (KSG '09) as he was being tackled, and Trimble ran it in through defenders for the score. The second two tries were by team co-captain Jeff Todd (HLS '08). The big man decided the quickest way to the try zone was to run over defending players. Joe Kim (OA) played his first A-side match and drilled one opponent on the sideline, driving him back 5 meters. Joel Hartel (NB) added to the hurt by crushing several opponents and Goldstein rucked strongly and made tackle after tackle. The final score of 26-0 was modest by Harvard's standards but was enough to get the job done.

HBS was ranked #1 seed for the afternoon games. Unfortunately, The Wharton School of Finance was unable to teach it's students how to set up a simple tournament bracket because Harvard A's were slated to play Harvard B's. After a long delay to allow Wharton to correct their flaw, Harvard accepted the change to the bracket. Unfortunately, this change resulted in Harvard's B-side having to play a more difficult opponent in the afternoon instead of the previously scheduled Columbia B-side. Wharton's returning players will be required to attend HBS analytics next summer in order to prevent this from happening again.

Continued...

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