The college rugby Division I-A championships in Houston will have a Bay Area representative on both the men’s and women’s side.
The Saint Mary’s men will be making their seventh trip to the national title game since 2013 under coach Tim O’Brien. They’ll play Navy on Saturday.
The Stanford women will compete for the national crown for the first time since 2014 when they take on Grand Canyon University on Sunday. They are seeking their fifth national title.
Here is how the Bay Area teams reached Houston:
Saint Mary’s: Why the Gaels’ Big 3 are unstoppable
Saint Mary’s rugby will bring the best attacking trio in the country to the championship match.
Inoke Waqavesi starts the Saint Mary’s attack from his fly-half position, operating as the lightning-quick quarterback of the Gaels’ lightning-strike attack.
Dom Besag provides the muscle, a battering ram of a player who has the breakaway speed to take any pass from Waqavesi to paydirt.
Erich Storti is a hybrid of the two, a great decision-maker who has the juice to shake off tacklers.
O’Brien preaches “optionality” — a philosophy in which each player on the pitch should be able to exploit a weakness if given the opportunity.
The Gaels attacking trident have done just that in the playoffs. They beat Grand Canyon in the first round, rival Cal in the second and then dispatched BYU in the semifinal to punch their ticket to Texas.
Saint Mary’s is in its second title game against a service academy in three years, and hope the showdown with the Midshipmen goes better than their 20-8 defeat at Army’s hands in 2022.
Seniors Storti and Waqavesi were both on that team, while sophomore Dom Besag was still dominating at De La Salle High School in nearby Concord.
One teammate called Besag “the best player in America,” and for good reason. He is one of four candidates for the Scholz award, the Heisman Trophy of college rugby.
“Shoot, I’m not sure I’m even the best player on this team,” a humble Besag said.
Those three get the glory and a good portion of the tries, but they’ve also got plenty of support. Sosaia Pongi, Iosefa Toia’ivao and Erich’s younger brother, Mario, have blazing speed on the flanks.
Team captain Kaipono Kayoshi and fellow senior King Matu are do-it-all players who are comfortable making tackles and pushing ahead as rumbling runners. And, of course, forwards Hunter Chuhlantseff, Nate Deegan, John Wilson and others do the dirty work on scrums and lineouts.
“We’re just a bunch of random misfits coming to Saint Mary’s,” O’Brien said. “But you know, I don’t want to overdo the misfits part, because we have some very talented misfits.”
Those talented misfits will have to play against Navy, which won last year’s national title. They’re ready for the challenge.
“Going is pretty cool, but winning is even better,” Storti said.
Stanford: Multi-sport athletes is Cardinal’s key to success
Is specialization in sports overrated?
The Stanford women’s rugby team would say yes.
“We have no one who played rugby before they played at Stanford,” coach Richard Ashfield told the Bay Area News Group.
Despite being a collection of relative newbies to the sport, they’re the furthest thing from unathletic.
Mahie Wilhelm was an accomplished high school water polo player in Hawaii and picked up rugby by her third year on The Farm.
A fast and physical runner with the motor to make tackles, she’s translated her relentless play in the pool onto the pitch.
And there’s Sydney “Spud” Davis, an Idaho native who was the manager of Stanford’s storied women’s basketball team for a year.
Ashfield said she could’ve played for other colleges, but valued getting a Stanford education over hooping. With college basketball not an option, she found her way to rugby.
“She’s a dynamo,” Ashfield said.
And when Stanford’s best kicker had to miss time, freshman Kirsten Lees was more than capable of filling in.
Her experience as a preps soccer star in Connecticut helped give Stanford the punch it needed to beat Florida and Western Washington in the regionals.
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“She was like, ‘Oh, I played soccer, so I’ll give it a shot’ 10 minutes before the game started,” Ashfield remembered. “Then she made three out of three.”
Ashfield said senior fly-half Laura Bocek, a Martinez native who is studying International Relations, honed her reflexes and decision-making skills as a goalkeeper.
“She’s just been fantastic, and she’s always moving us forward,” the coach said.
Unlike the Saint Mary’s men, who are more than comfortable with trying to run the ball out of their own try zone using their fleet-of-foot runners, the Stanford women play a comparatively conservative brand of rugby.
“With the heat we’ll face in Houston, trying to run 100 meters isn’t realistic,” Ashfield said. “We’ll play a territory game, and we feel like we have a strong defense to help us do it.”
Grand Canyon will be a tough final test, but Stanford’s coach is confident that his players will ace it.
“They are Stanford students, so they are an incredibly smart bunch,” Ashfield said.
