Life Opens Season with a Win
Life Opens Season with a Win
Life University kicked off their 2025-26 D1A season with a well-taken 35-7 defeat of Army West Point.
The win was also a nice precursor to Sunday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for their spanking new lockers rooms.
Life started the game with their kickoff going into touch on the full, giving Army a scrum at the center of the field.
But when Army went wide Life was able to force them into touch for a lineout near midfield. From there the Running Eagles wasted no time in spinning it wide where wing Jordan Vassel blazed down the sideline to stake his team to a 5-0 lead.
Jonty Lee slotted the difficult conversion to make it 7-0.
Army worked their way back into Life territory and after some hard work the forwards bulled it over to tie the game.
Not that long after, Army gifted Life a score with a rather slow box kick getting charged down by both locks, Aden Beatty and Tristan Hubsch. The ball bounced up nicely then for Hubsch to grab and take over the line.
Lee was once again solid on the kick from out wide, and it was 14-7.
Both teams had excellent chances to score further in the first half, but the defenses worked hard to keep them out. And little execution errors didn’t help.
Early in the second period Life was able to work their way down to the Army tryline where loosehead prop Shaun Mathyssen picked up and was helped over the line by his teammates.
Life weathered a long period of Army inside their 22 but the Black Knights could not find the gap that would produce a long line break. When Life got a penalty in a scrum in front of their posts they were finally able to get out of trouble.
There followed a torrid period where Life got two tries in quick succession. Up 35-7 they found themselves under pressure once more. Again the defense held Army away from the tryline, and the Black Knights will come away from this game feeling that they should have had a better strike rate.
Life held on 35-7, but in many ways the game was closer than that.
