The fall, 2015 season started with Wisconsin-Whitewater Head Coach Matt Pederson saying his team was in the toughest conference in men’s DII college rugby, and that was before Northern Iowa and Lindenwood-Belleville had played their first games in the WIIL.

This past weekend, Pederson found out just how tough, as the Warhawks battled through UNI 46-17 and Lindenwood-Belleville 45-20 to win the conference.

“They were our most difficult games of the season,” said Pederson. “They were above the level of the previous Round of 16 playoff games we have played. Those two teams will go far.”

On Saturday, Whitewater had to deal with some big, powerful UNI forwards.

“They were very strong in the scrum and used their forwards very well,” said Pederson. “We were able to take advantage with our centers and wings.

This included Alec Treuthardt, who was a scoring machine.

It was UWW’s outside backs that opened up the game. The leadership of players such as Robby Sindic, Eric Pachowitz, and Jack Healy kept them on task, and, said Pederson, “we gradually took control.”

And they had key contributions from young players such as Riley Peckham, a freshman who hadn’t started a game all season and played well at prop.

In the final against Lindenwood-Belleville, it was another young forward, this one Zach Smith at lock, who made a contribution, and Treuthardt once again on the scoresheet.

But it wasn’t each.

“Lindenwood-Belleville has a good rugby sense,” said Pederson. “They are playing good rugby and playing as a team. We put in 20 minutes of good, clean rugby, and then we got two tries within a minute at the end of the first half, and we kind of secured it. They did really well to put together phases and forced us to defend and be a complete rugby team.”

Whitewater discovered that they can do that - be a complete team. When their forwards we asked to carry the offensive load, the pack did just that. When the backs needed to score quickly, they did that, also. It was impressive, and clinical, but also good play forced on them by good opposition.