Men’s Rugby Goes Un­de­feated

MISHAWAKA, IND.--The men’s rugby team this sea­son has had their best sta­tis­ti­cal year since the pro­gram be­gan, win­ning every game by at least 20 points. The team has only ever lost one reg­u­lar sea­son game in pro­gram his­tory. They kept this streak alive by end­ing their sea­son with an un­de­feated record of 7-0.  

The Pi­lots won the Great Lakes Con­fer­ence, win­ning 93-5 against Calvin Col­lege, in Grand Rapids, MI. They are trav­el­ling to Co­lum­bia, Mis­souri on No­vem­ber 17 to com­pete in the play­offs. Un­til all con­fer­ence games are over, the of­fi­cial seeds re­main un­de­ter­mined.  

The Rugby team has been waiting for another banner to be hung, after already winning a national title. As of Oct. 19, the Rugby team was ranked no. 4 in USA Division II.    The team this year has been closer than ever before. Jake Jagielski said, “If you can get guys closer together, they’ll play harder for each other on the field.”   Jake was awarded MVP in the National Small College Rugby Organization (NSCRO) in 2016. He is in his senior year at Bethel.  A majority of the team this year is upper-classmen, and Nick Chevalier said, “They’ve had time for those guys to develop,” he continues, “Everyone has done a pretty good job of building up the freshmen and all the new guys on the team.”   With this dynamic, they have been able to run more complex offenses that they will be able to run in the playoffs.  Nick is the only captain this year. He was also awarded the Heart and Soul Award by NSRCO in 2017.  Look out for further details on the games. Good luck, Pilots!