I think there were a couple of players that deserve a special mention from the past weekend. It really was a complete team effort, but I want to give some insight into the weekend.
If Deven Owsiany was not the MVP, my vote would have gone to Lisa Henneman. Lisa had a long road coming to Penn State. She was interested in coming to Penn State when she was in high school, but coming from Seattle the additional cost was difficult. She went to a local college before transferring this year to Penn State. A former captain of the USA U20 team, Lisa did struggle a little bit with the step up in play to Penn State. She moved from center to fullback in the fall and did not look back. Your saw her great attacking ability, striking into the line and tremendous play making ability. Lisa has had a 3 year journey to Penn State and showed what an impact she has made.
Rachael Muir was another player that had to wait a couple of years to get to main campus. Rachael played rugby in high school but was at the Hazelton campus for 2 years before transferring as a junior to University Park. While she was at Hazelton she played to Keystone, a women’s club team in Philadelphia. Rachael was the starting fullback in 2008 and 2009 for the team, and was matched up against Jess Watkins many times in those games. Rachael moved to wing this year and it really demonstrated her finished ability and allowed the team to move Lisa to fullback. Rachael had a great National Championship run, and it was highlighted by a number of great tries, however the highlight for me was watching her run down Jess Watkins from the blindside wing and preventing her from scoring 3 times!
Kelly Sager has been moved around a lot. This time last year she was a center, in the fall she was a flanker and this weekend she started at loosehead prop! Kelly is relatively small for a prop, but very strong. She played well against Army, but strained her neck, and we were not sure if she could play against Stanford. Sumie, our wonderful trainer, checked her out in the morning and said that she could probably go for about 20 minutes. When you have a player that is carrying an injury you need to start them, because you cannot risk bringing them in as a substitute and have them aggravate the injury. Kelly ended up play 60 minutes, and get stronger in the scrum as the game went on.
This year the competition for places on the traveling squad was fierce. A number of players that traveled last year did not this year. The competition is going to get greater with over 10 recruits that we know of coming next year. A number of seniors did not make the trip to Florida and one of those was Sara Ziegler. Sara was very disappointed in not being selected for the Round of 16 and quarterfinals. But she did not prevent her from helping the team prepare as she continued to come to every practice. She also knew that there was one more chance to be selected and she wanted to make sure she was prepared for that opportunity. With the BYU forfeiting the game, and Wisconsin-Milwaukee declining the chance to play us in the quarterfinals we needed a high pressure game to prepare. So we arranged a probables vs possibles match the Wednesday after we got back from Florida. We told the team that this was a selection opportunity and that if they stepped up and played well they would get selected. Sara did exactly that. She deserved to be on the field at the final whistle when we won our National Championship because she demonstrated a strength and persistence that is unusual.
One note about Sara coming into the game with about 15 minutes to go. She replaced Meghan Byrnes, who with Deven, had prevented the dangerous Stanford centers from breaking the line. As Sara came onto the field, Deven went to her and said “Sara, welcome to the game. Nobody gets through the center of this field, right?” And no-one did!
