National Championships

The Aggies had a great showing at the 2012 Collegiate 7s National Championships this weekend, finishing 8th!  This is the highest finish yet for the Aggies in 7s competition.  The field for the tournament was amazing, with some (if not the best) collegiate 7s ever played in the States.  Long-time rival Arkansas State managed to defeat Life University for the championship, putting an exclamation point on a very successful tournament for host Texas A&M.

 

2012 Texas A&M National Championship squad

The Aggies played their first match Friday morning against Bowling Green and came out with a decisive 31-7 victory.  Bowling Green had tremendous size and a number of highly skilled players, so it was great to start the weekend off with a big win.  TAMU followed-up with a 38-0 victory over Western Washington, another great effort against a well-coached and physically big squad.  The other pool member St. Mary's had two wins going into the last match also, making it the pool championship game.  This match was a brutal affair, with some tremendous hits occurring all over the field.  The Aggies scored first after Conor Mills made a long break before off-loading to the hard-charging Andres Diaz for the try.  St. Mary's managed to tie the game 5-5 and then pushed over another right before the half to take a 10-5 lead.  The rest of the match was a defensive struggle, and despite moving the ball deep into Gael territory, the Aggies were not able to break their defense.  St. Mary's managed to pick up a cheap try on the last play of the game for a 17-5 win.  Third-ranked St. Mary's was a fierce defensive team and well-deserving of the win, but A&M had its chances and were unable to capitalize, leaving the team very disappointed.  Despite the loss to St. Mary's, A&M was one of two teams to advance to the cup quarterfinals based on point-differential.  Their quarterfinal opponent was top-ranked Life University. 

 

The Aggies gave Life everything they could handle in the 1st half, but were down 10-0 as the stanza ended.  The score could have easily stood at 10-7, after Matt Theodore made a beautiful run, scoring what appeared to be a try close to the posts.  Unfortunately, a Texas in-goal AR ruled that the ball was held up and the try was disallowed.  Film evidence from the match clearly shows the AR out of position to make the call, and incontrovertible evidence that the try was scored - the hands of fate are sometimes cruel...  Life proved why they are so highly-regarded by scoring three more tries in the 2nd half for a 32-0 win.  This result pushed the Aggies into the plate competition and a match against Navy.  The United States Naval Academy was an extremely fit, well-disciplined, and highly motivated competitor and jumped out to a quick 21-0 lead at halftime.  It appeared the Aggies were trying to find their equilibrium after the Life loss and played poor defense in the first half.  The second half was a different story, with the Aggies scoring three unanswered tries, but coming up short 21-17.  The Ags demonstrated a huge amount of character in the second half and had they played the same way in the first...one can only wonder at the end result.  The final match of the tournament (7th-8th place) was against perennial powerhouse Central Washington.  CW had more left in the tank than the Aggies and cruised to a 26-5 win.  The Aggies played tenacious defense in the first half, but ran out of juice, giving up two tries in the second half.  The highlight of the match was reserve (freshman) Danny Amsler's 40m break for a try down the sideline.

 

Despite our disappointment at falling in a couple of extremely tight matches, the Aggies are proud of their 8th place finish.  We were challenged by every team in the tournament and the standard of play was the very highest.  It is a fantastic accomplishment to know that you went up against the best the country can offer and finish in the top ten!   Special thanks go out to all of our supporters - we love you guys!!