Sweet 16's in Alburquerque, NM

It was a long weekend but so worth it. We arrived late Thursday night and had a walk through Friday morning. The rest of the day was spent either resting, doing homework or watching some of the other games.

Our first game was bright and early on Saturday against Texas A&M. We lost but honestly, that was probably the hardest our team has every played. We played good defense but our problem was ball possession. They were good ruckers and we...well, we were not. When we did have ball in hand we were able to do things but it just didn't happen that often. Despite all the hype of the speed in their backline, I think we had more and they weren't able to run around us. They were able to bang it up the middle and their scrum was really good. Our number 1 said that the prop she went against was probably the best she had ever scrummed against. They did get tired in the second half and their backs did not want to tackle, which helped us come back and score two tries. Overall it was a game to be proud of. We lost but we kept in the game the whole time.

The game against Vassar on Sunday was not nearly as fun. Our team was tired and it showed. They just looked like they wanted it more. We did score 12 points again in the second half so it's not like we gave up. It was interesting to watch the Vassar team. It was pretty much a team of the 8, 9, and 10. The centers either were skipped or passed the ball back to the flyhalf. The back three could run but their catching was not up to par. I like that our team has skills across the board, not just in one particular player. Their flyhalf was very impressive though. She had good field vision and could kick.

We lost our two games but I'm still proud of our team. Our coach gave us a breakdown of the experience we had in our starting 15 and it's obvious that we're a very young team. We had only two four year players and only 3 or 4 three year players. Everyone else was either a first year vet or a rookie. I think that's pretty impressive especially compared to last year. We had a team stacked with third and fourth year players last year and high expectations to go with but we still didn't make it to Sweet 16's. This year with a team, that quite frankly did not impress me when I first saw them play Santa Cruz in January, we made it. So even though it's over and even though we didn't win, I'm satisfied. I think we put ourselves in a good place for next year.

As a whole our league did pretty well. Stanford is in the Final Four, both Davis and Chico made it to Elite Eight, and we most likely maintained the ranking we had coming in. The Cal men, of course, owned and St. Mary's also made it to Final Four. Unfortunately, they will be playing each other in the semifinals.

As for the actual event, I liked that everyone was in one place but I did have some grips.

Medical prepardness: One of our girls had an ashma attack that required her to go to the hospital. It took 30 minutes from the time we told the event staff that she needed an ambulance to the time the ambulance got there. That's just ridiculous. Yes, they were doing on site stuff to help her but in a tournament that has 48 teams playing a high contact sport there should be an ambulance waiting on site. It's just stupid not to have that.

Event gear: They made pink shirts. Pink? Seriously? I bought one because that was the only medium left but the only time I'll ever wear it is when everything else is in the laundry hamper. I understand that some people may like the pink but they should have ordered more of the green and blue. Also, order more smalls next time! We may play rugby but that does not mean we're all of amazon proportions. In the end we're young fit women in college, which means that when the shirts are in men sizes that most of us will probably wear small or medium.

Stagger the games: I would have liked to watch the Chico vs. Penn State game but I couldn't because it was at the same time as our game against Vassar.

Make shaded seating: The players want to watch other games but we can't sit out in the sun all day without the sun draining us for our own games.