By Sunday afternoon began with a scrum and ended with the Long Beach State rugby club team conquering its fourth straight Gold Coast league title, beating Santa Barbara City College 47-17 at The Beach.
The 49ers cruised to a fourth straight league title, dominating their two weekend opponents by a combined score of 121-29.
“You don’t hear a lot of teams winning four in a row,” fifth year senior and rugby player Martin Sanchez said. “It’s a testament to the coaches and players that keep coming out.”
After LBSU’s (30-0) defense surrendered 12 points in the first half against Cal State Fullerton on Saturday, the most points allowed in the first half all year, it’s defensive approach settled down and went back to the basics.
“We started to play Ping-Pong with them,” LBSU head coach Jason Reynolds said. “We had to stop what we were doing, and readjust. What happens when you play a team like [Fullerton] that isn’t as good as you are, you tend to play down to their level and you try to do stuff so fast because you can see that they’re sloppy and the ball is rolling around.”
LBSU’s defense locked down after CSUF scored first, then its offense exploded, scoring 74 unanswered points to win 74-12.
“Once we settled down we were more structured and were able to put more points on the board,” Reynolds said.
In Sunday’s championship game the 49ers faced off against Santa Barbara City College, who defeated University of San Diego on Saturday. Santa Barbara’s fans traveled with the club and made sure their voices were heard.
Nguyen, who is known as “Panda,” said that playing in the middle of the scrum is rough but said that being mentally tough and blocking out outside noise is more important in rugby than anything else.
“It’s hard, it’s more of a mental game,” Nguyen said. “Physicality is going to be there, but mentally you have to be tuned in.”
LBSU outplayed Santa Barbara on all of its scoring tries. Its tenacious defensive play held off Santa Barbara from making any comeback attempt.
“It’s mentally more about your heart and the will that you have in your mind, which is the motor we’ve tried to instill into the program,” Sanchez said.
Nguyen said the club’s business mentality filters out any distractions from their opponent’s tactics, adding, “we don’t do any of that bullshitting around.”
“We don’t play to any other team’s game,” Nguyen said. “We keep to ourselves and we score. It’s business. [We] get back to the line and [are] ready to score again.”
LBSU celebrated its win by drenching Reynolds with a cooler full of water.
“It means everything,” Reynolds said. “I love LBSU rugby. I’m only the fourth coach here in 41 years. So the most important thing for me is carrying on the philosophy that was started by Dr. Dale Toohey who started the club.”
The club will head up north to UC Davis in two weeks to compete in the Elite Eight.
