Tomer Chen with the great form tackle
A very young Michigan side traveled to the west side of the state to take on a very big and experience Calvin College side this past Saturday afternoon. This trip was an exciting opportunity for Michigan, as sixteen of the twenty two players that made the trip had never played a game of rugby for the school.
Michigan played some hard defense for the first 35 minutes, only giving up two penalty kicks while repeatedly pushing Calvin back out of their own attacking half. The Wolverines also did a great job in attack as freshman Guy Burke directed his squad several times down the field threatening to score. Unfortunately, it was not the wolverines day, Calvin’s size started to take its toll and the tries started to trickle in the rest of the game. The game did end on a high note as captain Nick Azzopardi threw a sweet dumbie that froze the Calvin defense, and allowed the prop to rumble in from twenty-five meters out for the Michigan try. The final whistle of the game sounded shortly after with a final of 37-5.
The score wasn’t as important so much as the development that occurred with this group of young players. Everyone who made the trip showed significant improvement from the first whistle to the last, which was the goal of this game. Needless to say, the future looks bright for the UMRFC program.
ROSTER
1. Nick Azzopardi (Yellow card @31′)
2. Kyle Gruebnau (Michael Martinez Silva @70′)
3. Brennan Arnett (Alex Carson @65′)
4. Andrew Nelson (Ben Cotsarelis @40′)
5. Mike Shay
6. Jeremy Reid (Ian Charpie @8′)
7. Jeremy Parks (Rami Farawi @45′)
8. Brian Chu
9. Guy Burke
10. Mike Rawetzki (Tomer Chen @40′)
11. Justin Malin
12. Ron Marine
13. Jacob Clode (John Yang @45′)
14. Juan Aguirre
15. Menglei Shi
16. Alex Carson
17. Michael Martinez-Silva
18. Rami Farawi
19. Ben Cotsarelis
20. Ian Charpe
21. Tomer Chen
22. John Yang
