The Grand Valley State University women’s rugby club is starting off the season in rather dominating fashion.

Led by head coach Bob Richthammer, the Lakers are in a great position to take advantage of their talents and make some noise this upcoming season. GVSU started the season off Sept. 15 by crushing the Central Michigan club team, 130-0, taking advantage of their speed and tight, clean play by their flankers and wings in the victory.

“We have one of the fastest teams in the country, and that’s talking about Division I and Division II rugby,” Richthammer said. “That just comes with the way we recruit. We have a young team and they all love to run, they keep the scoreboard out of their minds and just play their game.”

If you spend more than five minutes near the team, you can easily tell they don’t take the phrase “we’re a family” lightly at all; in fact, that’s one of the team’s greatest strengths. While their opponents are trying to work on team chemistry issues, the Lakers are a tight-knit group that already have solid team chemistry, enabling them to be able to work on their on-the-field issues and to progress their skills further.

“Everybody’s goal is to win and have fun doing so, and we love working with each other to go about reaching those goals,” said sophomore Caity Kiraly. “Everyone works really well together, which makes things run very smoothly. And it doesn’t hurt that we have great coaches who put in just as much hard work as we do.”

The Lakers have some tough competition coming up, however, having to head to Bowling Green to play Bowling Green State University Sept. 30. Playing a larger school is nothing new to the Lakers, but traveling to a bigger school, on the road, presents challenges. The Falcons should give the Lakers a very competitive game this weekend as they come in on a hot streak.

“Throw out the records for this game,” Richthammer said. “It’s going to be a dogfight no matter what. There’s no love lost between these two teams.”

Adding to this, senior Emma Pesci said, “From what I know they’ve always been tough competition… They forfeited their game against us last year, so we’re not as familiar as we could be. But it should be a good game.”

The team is currently running a can drive to raise money for updated equipment and to help with some of the costs of being a club team. If you are interested in helping the team out, you can contact Richthammer at [email protected] for more information.

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