Eagle boys go for gold, but finish silver; girls touch team overcomes tough day to defeat Jakarta for bronze

By Natalie Muller

With the scorching sun beating down on Jakarta International School’s turf field, the SAS boy’s rugby team and girl’s touch rugby team took to the field for first day of their respective IASAS tournaments. Both teams started Thursday strongly with the boys recording a close 15-12 win over the International School Bangkok (ISB) Panthers and a more dominant 30-5 one over the International School Manila (ISM) Bearcats.

Likewise, the girls, last year’s champions and tournament favorites, proved to be up for retaining their crown after beating the International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL) Panthers 6-1 and the Taipei American School (TAS) Tigers 5-3, in a match which needed a stellar second-half performance.

The second day of the tournament placed both teams against tougher competition and by and large decided which teams would make it to the final. The girls faced a tricky day against ISB and ISM, the team’s main rivals for the gold. Lacking a creative spark, the girls fell 0-2 and 1-3 to excellent teams. This placed the two in the touch rugby final, leaving SAS to play in the consolation game. Senior and co-captain Erika Farias summarized the feelings of the team.

“We were crushed. It was tough knowing we couldn’t get into the finals, especially with a lot of us being seniors and this being our last chance.”

The boys on the other hand started the day strong with a hard-fought 29-19 win over ISKL. Their real test came in the afternoon against a Jakarta International School (JIS) Dragons side that had already crushed ISKL 67-0. A strong team performance combined with moments of individual brilliance from seniors Max Shaulis and Austin Cox left the score at a 12-12 draw. This put both Jakarta and Singapore in the final, a repeat of last year’s championship.

Senior Nico Daily said the team was happy with the result. “They were the team to beat. We didn’t really have to win. Our coach wanted us to tie, more than to win or lose. He didn’t want us to win and be cocky coming into the final. He also didn’t want us to lose because then our confidence would have been too low.”

Saturday, the final day of the tournament, pitted the girls against JIS twice, once in the morning for a round robin match and the other in the afternoon for the consolation game. Halftime at the morning game saw SAS losing 2-1 against a JIS side playing in front of their home crowd. A resurgent second half, with brilliant breaks through the JIS defense by junior Becky Kreutter and senior Lauren Felice saw the game finish with a score of 3-2. Co-captain Farias saved particular praise for Kreutter.

“Becky Kreutter played a lot better the few games leading up to IASAS. She stepped up for IASAS and got on the all-tournament team,” Farias said.

The final again saw JIS take an early lead but junior Kristen Skill eventually leveled the score before co-captain Felice scored the winning try. The girl’s touch team left Jakarta with the bronze medal, receiving some inspiration from past SAS touch rugby players.

“Nora Hanagan emailed her dad [coach Bill Hanagan] a letter that Lauren read out loud to us. She knew that we were already out of the finals but told us to leave that in the past,” Farias said.

The boys breezed through their Saturday morning match against TAS, perhaps with an eye turned toward that afternoon’s final. JIS scored the first try before Shaulis went on a deadly run to score a try and level the score. Although JIS again took the lead, a great steal by sophomore Andrew Milne led to him outsprinting three JIS players and scoring SAS’s second try. With four minutes left to go in the second half, persistent pressure by Jakarta on the SAS line led to the Eagles giving up two more tries.

“I think we just lost focus. After Max missed the kick, we were all pretty down,” Daily said.

As the whistle blew signaling the end of the match and the Jakarta fans ran out onto the field to celebrate, disheartened Eagles stood on the field with a sense of déjà vu—JIS had broke through their line to win it last year.

One Response to “Eagle boys go for gold, but finish silver; girls touch team overcomes tough day to defeat Jakarta for bronze”

1. sts says:

   May 28, 2010 at 7:37 pm

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