By Spencer Cerceo ‘25
On Monday, April 7, the Brother Rice rugby team kicked off their season with a challenging matchup against Fenwick High School, ultimately falling 47-5 in their opening match. While the game was not in the Crusaders’ favor, the game offered many valuable lessons, especially for many new and first year players.
Senior Liam McNulty said, “The first game of the season didn’t go as the team wanted with a lack of motivation and not great defense, but as the season goes on I feel that the new guys will learn more about the game with the help of the seniors on the team and their experience.”
As a member of the team, I definitely could feel that there was a lack of energy and motivation while warming up before the game. This did not help the team in trying to beat Fenwick, and if we did have more energy, I believe that we would have had a better shot at winning.
There are a handful of senior leaders on the rugby team ,and we are trying our best to guide the new and younger players through the physical challenges. We try to lead by example on and off the field, offering encouragement during tough moments and helping the new players stay focused on improvement.
Junior Sean Sloyan said, “Playing in my first rugby game was a lot harder than I expected. I took a lot of hard hits and made some mistakes, but I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from this game and hope to improve through the rest of the season.”s
The Brother Rice rugby team has a lot of first time players this season, and this match served as a wake up call to them. Fenwick’s physicality and fast-paced gameplay was tough to keep up with, especially for the first time players.
Senior Diego Padron said, “It felt good being back on the rugby field again with my teammates. Unfortunately, we didn’t meet our standards that we had for that game, but we will improve and get the ball rolling.”
We have a schedule full of tough opponents ahead of us and we must be locked in during practice and during the games. If we stay focused, hold each other accountable, and keep pushing ourselves, we have no doubt that we’ll see progress and start turning those lessons into wins.
