WGR Alumns win ACRA Women's Collegiate Championship

Congrats to WGR alumns Georgia Porter and Katie Dries. They formed the 9-10 combination for Winona St in the D2 ACRA Women’s Collegiate Championship , which they won Sunday 28-14 against Notre Dame College, after a big semifinal victory win Saturday over Kutztown, Pa.

 

Junior Georgia Porter, a scrumhalf and Vernon alumn,  scored two tries in the semis and one in the final.  Sophomore Katie Dries, a CMHS alumn, directed their backline at flyhalf and was noted for her "booming kicks".

A few quotes taken from a Rugby Mag interview:

“Georgia always impresses me,” said Winona flanker and eventual Championship MVP, Holly Vassar. “She never gets enough credit. She’s really good at looking up, seeing the field, knowing exactly where the ball needs to go and getting it there. She’s able to step in and poach – she’s basically a forward and a back, and we’ve never had a scrumhalf like that before.”

About the final game: “We had 10 minutes at halftime, and we said we had to secure the ball and do what we knew worked for us,” Porter said. “[In the first half] we tried to play their game and tried to offload it and pop it up, but that’s not how we play. We had to bring the ball down, ruck it and secure it.”

 

Other ACRA Championship Notes:

-Northern Iowa lost an entertaining D1 semifinal match to Norwich, the eventual D1 champions.

Of note in that match:

 

“Freshman Eileen Lieb, a flanker, is someone to watch,” Murra said of the CMHS graduate and the type of difference-maker he wants to attract. “I saw her at last year’s high school nationals, and she was the MVP of the game we watched. I met her parents on the sidelines, chatted with them and got her to come to us."

“She’s the last of 15 kids, so we already knew a couple of things before meeting her,” Murra added. “Her family is basically a rugby team. She knows about sacrifice, hard work, those sorts of things. … She’s a little kid with a lot of fire and had to fight her way onto the field. … I see her as a future leader.”

-Northern Iowa won the 3rd Place Match Sunday with a 32-15 victory over Navy

-In that match "The forwards did a good job of retaining their ball, and minute flanker Eileen Lieb was a hallmark of the Panthers’ rigidity in the breakdown. At one point, the tiny freshman blew off Navy center Katie Smith – who looks three times her size – as she tried to poach the ball on the sideline."

ACRA ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM:
D1:  Eileen Lieb (freshman)(Northern Iowa)
D2:  Georgia Porter (junior)(Winona St)