Navy’s men’s rugby team opened its season by shutting out a defending national champion. The Midshipmen blanked St. Bonaventure 50-0 at the Prusmack Rugby Center on Saturday, with seven different players scoring tries in a dominant, balanced attack.
The result carries more weight than a typical opener: Navy enters this season as the reigning runner-up in the Collegiate Rugby Association of America’s Division I-A National Championship, having fallen 36-22 to top-ranked California in May. St. Bonaventure, meanwhile, came in as the defending fall-season national champion. Beating that program by 50 points to open the year is a statement result for a Navy squad still chasing its first title since a previous championship four years ago.
“You can’t ask for a whole lot more,” director of rugby Gavin Hickie said. “We didn’t concede any points, our discipline was very good and we scored 50 points. For what we were trying to achieve in our first game, it couldn’t have gone any better from a purely scoreline perspective.”
Jake Cornelius got Navy on the board just four minutes in, powering through the line after a deep run into St. Bonaventure’s 22-meter zone. Scrum-half Sean Donohue set up Jack Skidmore for a second try in the 13th minute, and Andrew Baublitz shook off a defender to score in the 31st, giving Navy a 19-0 halftime lead.
The Midshipmen kept pouring it on after the break. Grant Goddard opened the second half by intercepting a St. Bonaventure pass and racing untouched for a try in the 42nd minute. John Masino punched one in six minutes later, and Waylon Davis drove in a maul off a lineout in the 58th minute to push the lead to 40-0. Aidan Gerber blocked a St. Bonaventure clearing kick in the 69th minute, setting up Edmund Soeder to corral the loose ball for the final try. Fly half Kade Williams, who paced Navy with 15 points on six conversions and two penalty kicks, closed the scoring at the final whistle.
On defense, Navy’s biggest test came in the 61st minute, when the Midshipmen turned away a sustained St. Bonaventure push from inside the 5-meter line to preserve the shutout.
Hickie credited the team’s experience for the performance. “We have a very tight squad,” he said. “We’ve got 19 seniors this year and that has an impact. These guys have been playing together on the same pitch for the last three years. It’s taken us a long time to get to the point where our backs and the team as a whole have the skill level, and the confidence, to be able to throw that ball around.”
Navy returns to the Prusmack Rugby Center next Saturday for an exhibition match against the Potomac Exiles Rugby Club.
