In the first game of the day the team faced No.3 small college St. Johns, "Right off the bat we wanted to prove a point," said Joe Dao. Following that game, the Wildcats had two "B-side" games, the team decided to get more of their athletes some time on the pitch "We saw a lot of potential in those players and ended up winning those two games," Dao said. The next match was an "A-Side" game against the University of Minnesota-Duluth ranked #8 in Division II. This game was a proving point for the cats to get them out of the small college division or show that they deserve a higher ranking. Dao stated, "This was our best game as a team, one of our wings, Riley Kraemer, had four and almost had a fifth try for a touchdown." In the last game of the day played against University of Wisconsin-Stout, the Wildcats went down 0-15 in the first half. After being able to make some substitutions the Wildcats won the game, shutting out UWS in the second half and finishing the match 24-15.
There were a couple of standouts from the weekend "Vuyo Mdlalose and Jayden James, these guys play the Fly-half who basically controls the field on offense, they provide great leadership and skills," said Dao. Leadership and communication are two things that are going to help the Wildcats finish their goals that they didn't complete last year. "Our main goal this year is to win it all and I feel like with our leadership and new recruits, we could do it," Dao said. Dao continued to talk about the new leaderships and having a new page to start this year "We planned on changing the team around, we have completely new leadership, including captains and E-board members so all of new ideas and plans for the team are fresh". But it is not all about leadership- strength comes in numbers "Our freshman class this year makes up more than half our starting roster. These guys are nothing less than dogs on the field," said Dao.
The Men's Ruby team continues their road to the championship on Sept. 24 in Lawrence, Kansas, to matchup against the Kansas University Jayhawks, and the University of Missouri Tigers.
