Penn State Motivation found Despite Shutout Loss Against Navy

from Daily Collegian:

Pete Steinberg hopes Sunday’s loss is a wakeup call.

In its final game of the fall season against Navy, his Penn State women’s rugby team was shutout 41-0, in a performance Steinberg said was one of the worst by a Penn State rugby team.

Still, he thinks the players have the talent to win the program’s first back-to-back championships this spring.

After ending the season with a 12-2 record, Steinberg hopes the Lady Ruggers will be motivated by the loss and recognize what they need to work on to get back to the national championship match. He also pointed to how well the team played last spring as part of the team’s inability to reach their full potential this fall.

“One of the problems we have is that we look at the national championship game and we see ourselves demolishing Stanford, and then we think that’s the team that we are,” Steinberg said. “We’re not that team.”

Junior Deven Owsiany said although the loss to Navy wasn’t how the team wanted to end the season, she thinks it will help the team when working to defend its title this spring. Knowing now that nothing is going to come easy, Owsiany said the team will have to put in a lot more work in the off-season if it wants to compete for another championship.

Before practices resume in January, the team will have lifting sessions twice a week, and get a couple weeks off before conditioning and skills session start up again.

Steinberg said the team will focus on some of the things he feels they didn’t do well this spring including lineouts, something he says has been the “Achilles heel” for the team in the past couple years. Another area he thinks is key will be to develop a better understanding of the game and focus on performing under pressure.

“We’ve been very good when things are going well for us,” Steinberg said. “But when things don’t go well, we struggled to turn that around, and so I think that’s an area we’re going to have to spend a lot of time on.”

But the team will have some help.

When the players on internship and abroad this semester rejoin the Lady Ruggers in the spring, the young team will regain some of the experience it lacked this fall. Owsiany has been keeping in contact with her teammates who are abroad via Facebook and said they are excited to get back and start playing with the team again. Not only does Owsiany think the returning players will help out the team by sharing what the learned overseas, but it will also make players work harder at practice.

With such a large roster, the competition for positions on the A-side will force players to step up and put in a lot of effort if they want to earn the spots. Owsiany said the competition will be good for the players because they will make each other work harder and it will provide incentive to treat every practice like it’s a game.

Steinberg said one of the biggest impacts of the returning players is going to come from fifth-year senior Annie Zeigler, who is saving her last semester of eligibility for the spring. Zeigler’s scrumhalf position was filled by senior Sara Ziegler and sophomore Amber Curtis this fall, and Steinberg said they both did a great job stepping up in her absence, but ultimately her return is pivotal to the team.

“You can’t replace four years of playing scrumhalf in two months,” Steinberg said. “So I think Annie is going to provide a lot for us.”

But Steinberg is expecting other players to step up and be a factor in the spring as well. He said senior Meghan Byrnes developed into one of the team’s best players last year, and she is an example of someone who can impact the team through her words and her actions.

He also thinks junior Kasey Ferlic has the potential to help guide the program when she comes back from New Zealand, as well as Sadie Anderson. Even though Anderson is only a sophomore, Steinberg thinks she has the ability to be a leader on the team because people respect her for how well she plays.

But Steinberg said if this team wants to be on the elite level that last year’s team was, all the players are going to have to put in the effort and be dedicated to achieving the same goal.

“Everyone thinks it was easy last year,” Steinberg said. “It wasn’t. It was the product of a lot of hard work. We can’t step on the field and win a national championship. We win a national championship because a commitment is made between the players that it’s what they want to do.”