This offseason has been an eventful one for the UMBC Men's Rugby Football Club. With the formation of the "UMBC Stud 7's," UMBC's unofficial 7's team, its relative success in multiple summer 7's tournaments, and an increase in possible new recruits, UMBC is poised to make another deep run in the Potomac Rugby Union playoffs.
"Right now the sky is pretty much the limit. We've proven that we can play with and beat the best teams in our league," said team captain Will Miller.
More often than not, such optimism is unwarranted but UMBC has a reason to look ahead. With a majority of the starting 15 returning for another year and open competition between new players and returning players for every remaining spot, this year's team looks to be the most promising one in a long time.
Over the course of the past two seasons, UMBC has accumulated a record of 11-5-1 (including tournaments and playoffs), beating teams by a point differential of 252-137 while recording three shutouts in the process. After cruising to a 31-5 win over George Mason University in the PRU quarterfinals, UMBC suffered two heartbreaking defeats to Georgetown University in the semi-finals (12-3) and to Loyola University in the third place game (10-5). Even with those two losses, UMBC placed fourth in the PRU, which was the best ranking for UMBC since 1984.
"The success of the last two seasons motivated us to [work harder] over the summer because we want to keep the momentum going," flanker Michael Peause said.
Team president Evan Roberts however, looked past the successes of the team and instead focused on the things that needed to be done to get past fourth place.
"The team as a whole has a lot of work to do when we get back to school. We've got a couple weeks to prepare for our first game but it's going to be a tough couple of weeks. One aspect we are really missing though is a batch of new recruits to push us to get better and hopefully come to make an immediate impact on the field."
UMBC opens up its season against George Washington University on September 25th at UMBC.
-James Park
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