September 24, 2016
Army West Point Men’s Rugby Wins Against St. Bonaventure
Logo: St. Bonaventure Rugby and Army West Point Black Knights
Doug Coil
Army West Point Men’s Rugby traveled to Olean, N.Y. to face St. Bonaventure for a Friday night Rugby East match. With their 67-12 win, they are now 4-0 on the season and 3-0 in the conference. They are also ranked 7th in the D1A Rugby rankings.
This is the first time that Army has had consecutive 60 point matches. Last week they won 64-0 against West Virginia.
Today, Saturday, they will face the University of Buffalo in another Rugby East conference match.
Scoring Recap
Jon Kim, who would account for 18 of Army’s points, slotted a penalty kick at the 10th minute giving the Black Knights a 3-0 lead. Two minutes later, Jake Lachina went over for the first try and Kim added the conversion for a 10-0 lead. Kim added a second penalty kick at 15 minutes to increase Army’s lead to 13-0.
Army then added three more tries prior to halftime. These were scored by Ryan Moshak and converted by Kim (20′), Chris L’Amoureaux (27′) and Ben Lemon, converted by Kim (34′) for a 32-0 lead.
With three minutes remaining until halftime, St. Bonaventure’s Stephvan Tanner broke through the defense and after a kick and chase, Ted Gorman touched down for a try that also was converted to narrow the score to 32-7. This score remained at halftime.
The first fifteen minutes of the second half saw good defensive play by both teams before Army added three more tries within a five minute span that were all converted by Kim. The tries were scored by Sean Berry (55′), Hayden Cross (58′), and Ben Vasta (60′).
St. Bonventure then added their second try of the match by Chaz Schwenk and it was 53-12.
Army would add another two tries by Jason Blackwood, who also added the conversion (70′) and another try by Ben Vasta, once again converted by Blackwood (79′) This resulted in a 67-12 win for Army.
Because Army is also playing Buffalo on back-to-back days, Army had five new debuts in the match against St. Bonaventure. Ben Vasta scored two tries in his collegiate rugby debut for Army, while Jason Blackwood added a try and two conversions. Andrew Finken, Eli Brown, and Nathan Brooks were the other new players to gain valuable match time for Army.
In post match comments, Army Head Coach said “Overall, this was a strong performance and we hit a lot of targets we set out to improve upon from the week before. With that said, our job in Western New York is half done, and we need to refocus our efforts and continue to improve against Buffalo.”
Army: Dan Dougherty 2. Ryan Moshak (Ben Vasta @ 56th) 3. Adam Szott (Eli Brown @ 53rd) 4. Chris L’Amoureux 5. Sean Berry (Nathan Brooks @ 65th) 6. Raaqim Rispress 7. Alec Smith 8. Ben Lemon (Andrew Finken @ 59th) 9. John Royston (Jason Blackwood @ 59th) 10. Jon Kim (Drew Zagula @ 62nd) 11. James Mbony 12. Luke Heun (Jordan Jurosic @ 64th) 13. Sam Sutera 14. Hayden Cross 15. Jake Lachina (Tony Smith @ 54th) Coach: Matt Sherman
St. Bonaventure: 1. Luis Carpio (c) 2. Kyle Ciquera 3. Jesus Robles 4. Alfonso De Falco 5. Greg Terry 6. Matt Williams 7. Patrick McCormack 8. North Westall 9. Christian Artuso 10. Eamonn Matthews 11. Ryan McGovern 12. Stephvan Tanner 13. Jaret Williamson 14. Chaz Schwenk 15. Matthew Bergstol 16. Casey Mascaro 17. Greg Delaney 18. Joe Vazquez 19. Yohendy Martinez 20. John LaDuca 21. Ted Gorman 22. Jinesh Shaji 23. Tommy Anderson Coach: Tui Osborne
