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Delbarton On to NJ Final

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Delbarton On to NJ Final

Delbarton, in green, scrums down with Christian Brothers in the rain.

Delbarton is in to the New Jersey state final after hammering St. Peter’s 71-5 in the state single-school semifinal.

Photos courtesy Delbarton Rugby.
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The Green Wave will face longtime rivals St. Augustine in the June 7 final, the team that gave them the most trouble this season. 

Led by a cadre of athletic seniors, Delbarton has dominated their state competition, outscoring opponents 246-32 in five league and playoff games.

“Talk to any coach in any sport and they will tell you they have years like this,” said Delbarton Coach Nick Infante. “This is just our year.”

Almost half the squad are seniors, and while usually Delbarton gets its share of seniors who want to try rugby for the first time, many of this group have played rugby before. Four of his seniors have been in the program for four years. And they are athletic.

“I don’t think it’s really my coaching,” Infante joked. “These guys are as athletic a group as I’ve seen. We’ve been in situations where we’re winning a game and we want to sub out players, but they just keep playing. We don’t want to run up the score, but in rugby it’s kind of hard to stop sometimes.”

The two key games for Delbarton this year were St. Augustine and Christian Brothers. St. Augustine showed their hand early as a team to be reckoned with and put pressure on Delbarton, who prevailed 15-0. The other key game, then, was the last regular-season run-out. Delbarton faced Christian Brothers in the state final last season, where they led until late. A Christian Brothers try at the death tied the game, and it took penalty kicks for Delbarton to win it.

“The boys all felt that, while it was good to win, they didn’t like how they almost lost it, so they wanted to really make a statement this year,” said Infante. “We went into the season feeling that we shouldn’t hold on to win games.”

They needed to put opponents away, and they did with Christian Brothers, beating their rivals 77-5. That result was also crucial in that it avoided a three-way tie for 1st place, albeit one in which Delbarton would likely have have won on points difference regardless.

So now on to the playoffs. St. Augustine faced off with Christian Brothers in one semi, and prevailed. Delbarton had to wait for #5 team Hudson Catholic to play #4 St. Peter’s in a play-in. St. Peter’s won, and Delbarton then won the semi.

Delbarton is led by an experience group of players, but some have really shone this year. Among them, hard-hitting flanker Aaron Earlywine, and Ian Lodge, the team’s inside center and leading try-scorer. He is smart, physical, and very quick, and will be playing safety for John’s Hopkins University in the fall. While Lodge has been on fire in the backline, the key may well be up front. Props Jacob Maciejewski and Michael Sweetman set the tone in the front row. Maciejewski is a sophomore who decided to take up wrestling this year, and became county champion. So he then decided to take up rugby, and is a starting prop. He partners nicely with Sweetman to provide a solid possession platform for the Delbarton attack.

“We’ve got a lot of players from other sports,” said Infante. “The thing is, sports in high school can be a grind, and we didn’t want  rugby to be a grind. So we practice two days a week - we’re intense when we train, but we give the players some time off, as well, and they really enjoy it. We get a lot of comments from older kids saying ‘I wish I’d started this earlier.’”

 

See Delbarton v Christian brothers edited game video here.