Keep Loose, Embrace the Target, Set Standards: Gonzaga's Run to #1
Keep Loose, Embrace the Target, Set Standards: Gonzaga's Run to #1
Going into the 2023 HS season it was clear to many that Gonzaga might have a pretty special group.
Goff Rugby Report had Gonzaga ranked #1 and were hard-stretched in throughout the season to find anyone else to take that rankings. In fact, in the 19 weeks of GRR’s Top 50 so far this year, Gonzaga was in the top spot for 17 weeks. Now most programs would try to dodge the favorites status, but, really, Gonzaga couldn’t.
So they didn’t.
“We took a page out of the 2015 All Blacks’ attitude,” said Head Coach Peter Baggetta. “If we’re going to be the favorite, then we just embrace it. In years past our attitude was, ‘let’s not pay attention to that ranking.’ But this time it was more like “let’s own it. If people expect us to perform well, then let’s perform well.’”
Get It In Writing
They knew they were could. In January, when GRR visited Gonzaga’s training, there was certainly a palpable sense of high expectations.
“We thought we would be better than last year,” said Baggetta. “We have to get a couple of pieces right. But we knew we had a good team. We knew we’d play a tough schedule—we’ve always played one of the toughest schedules in the country. This one was tougher and while some of the games weren’t as tough as we thought they were going to be, we were holding ourselves to a standard.”
In December the players and coaches met up and established what they wanted to be. The team leaders didn’t hesitate. They wanted to be the most dominant team in the country.
“Everything we did was working towards that,” said Baggetta.
They even codified that vision, printing up a list of goals and approaches that would make that happen.
After beating this year’s eventual Rugby PA champs and last year’s Rugby PA champs in successive shutouts (Gregory the Great and LaSalle), Gonzaga took a trip to Northern California thanks to some cheap flights to Sacramento ($300 per person!).
They beat Jesuit Sacramento 24-13 and then lost to Granite Bay in a game that was tied before the final 20 minutes when Granite Bay’s fresher legs pulled them away.
Following that trip was a close win over Vienna (foreshadowing of Vienna’s Tier II triumph in Elkhart) and a tie with Fort Hunt. So good results, but the tie was enough to keep the Eagles out of the #1 ranking spot.
Then on March 25 Gonzaga played St. Ignatius, the team that had beaten them twice in 2022, including in the national final. Gonzaga won 49-7. That turned heads.
“To be honest we didn’t think we played particular well vs Ignatius,” said Baggetta. “It’s not that St. Ignatius is a bad team at all, they are good, but we weren’t clinical enough. We were making small errors.”
In other words, whatever the result, they weren’t adhering to that vision list. Not yet.
On to their tour of France, where Gonzaga split games with two very strong opponents.
Meanwhile, the coaching staff had been looking at their players. They were taking an analytical approach to the lineup—how could they get the best rugby players on the field?
Finding The Right Roles
“At the end of the day you have to have the players,” said Baggetta. “We had a number who are easily in the three players at their position in the country—Burke Carroll, Kieran Downs, Joey Ries, Andrew LaFrankie, Emmett Cook, Steele Dombo. In the last 10 years we’ve been in eight finals. We’ve won five of them, come in 2nd three times, and lost in the finals two times, not counting COVID. And every year we come back and ask ourselves, ‘what are we going to do differently?’”
The Steele Dombo story is one example of how they handles personnel. A big, powerful loose forward, Dombo was going to have some trouble finding playing time what with Burke Carroll the captain and No. 8, and potential LaFrankie, Jackson Tankersley, and Joey Hurley all in the mix.
At the same time, Gonzaga was missing a big source of go-forward.
“Steele played in middle school and as a freshman and a sophomore we had in the back row,” explained Baggetta. “But we has great hands, great acceleration, he’s big, and he’s physical. So we put him in the centers.”
With Brody Johnson, a small center with plenty of pace, having transferred to Gonzaga, the Dombo-Johnson combination was born. This would pay dividends in the final.
As it turned out, Tankersley suffered a shoulder injury at the USA U18 camp and was unavailable for all but three games. That forced another move, with Hurley, who often plays lock, donning the #6 jersey. And Dombo was now combining with lock Kimani Laumoli to bust through the line.
The move worked for Hurley. The captain of Gonzaga’s Black side, basically their 2nd side, Hurley practices jiu jitsu and is the school deadlift record-holder. He, like LaFrankie, was a defensive rock. In fact, it's difficult to overstate the influence of the back row on Gonzaga's defense. LaFrankie was called The Terminator for his robotic approach to tackling—he just didn't miss. Hurley wasn't much different. Carroll dominated lineouts (Jesuit lost the national final 38-18 in large part because they couldn't win lineouts) and while a player with the ability to just run through tacklers, he was remarkably unselfish in his desire to keep everyone in the game.
In the backs, there was also some managing of resources. Emmett Cook had been groomed as the flyhalf for some years, but Downs, the backup scrumhalf and flyhalf in 2022, was playing well and both were learning from capped Gonzaga alumnus Ben Cima.
Cima suggested Downs get more time, so Cook was moved to fullback, where he could unleash his full range of skills all over the field. Down developed well and was superb in the final, scoring an early try and using his various weapons well.
“Kieran has the ability to put people through space and he takes the ball to the line,” said Baggettta. “With that, we could then just tell Emmett, ‘you go find the space.’”
Back To That Sign
But in the end it was about the kids on the field who dedicated themselves to doing the extras (as that sign said) to get to the top.
“A lot of credit goes to our players,” added Baggetta. “It’s hard to run the table from preseason #1 to end-of-season #1. The extra for us was to win it for Lee Kelly. We didn’t think we had to do that, but it was very nice to win it for him."
Cancer Takes Gonzaga Director of Rugby Lee Kelly
"What we had was good emotional leaders. Burke is the first guy who has captained the team as a junior and a senior to a national final. They didn’t need to be rah-rah guys; just guys who went out and players. We fed off the energy of the work that our back row put in. At the same time, they’re loose. Everywhere we went we had a music box. The team was always relaxed, always close.”
They were #1 almost all season, and they were fine with that.