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Lindenwood Women Impressive Over CWU

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Lindenwood Women Impressive Over CWU

Lindenwood looked all the world like the top women's college rugby team in the country with a convincing 62-12 defeat of BYU Saturday.

It was an even game in that Lindenwood scored 34 points in the first half and 28 in the second. 

McKenna Strong, Fane Haungatau, and Caring De Freitas all scored tries in the first half, while Jessica Laughlin scored two and Natalie Gray added two conversions.

In the second period, Strong went over twice, and Morgan Freeman and De Freitas added one each. Gray (2), Haungatau, and Richelle Stephens added conversions.

"We were excited to travel to Washington and test ourselves against CWU," said Lindenwood Head Coach Billy Nicholas. "We knew they had just come off wins against BYU and GCU and were playing at home as well so they would have some momentum coming into this match. CWU has a lot of threats, they are going to continue to be great competitors with a very talented young group of athletes. 

"Personally, we were happy with our scrum today and our continuity in our attack and ability to finish, two things we worked on the past week and we showed some improvements. We have a few areas that we spoke about after the match that we still want to continue to chip away before we go into our next match, and excited we are afforded that opportunity to adjust, apply and work towards our collective potential. We are starting to find our rhythm and play a balanced game of attack."

It was senior day at CWU, but a tough day at the office.

"Today was obviously not how we wanted to send our seniors off," said CWU Head Coach Trevor Richards. "Full credit to Lindenwood, they are the number one team in the nation and for good reason, but we did not execute our game plan on either side of the ball. While we had a handful of good individual performances, especially out of players like Zonaye Tupuola, we gave up some soft tries on defense and our attack was unusually disorganized—not a good combination for winning matches. At the end of the day, everyone needs to get hit in the mouth at some point and this was an important wake up call for our team."

Lindenwood is now 3-0, having beaten Life twice and Central Washington once. CWU falls to 3-1. Central takes on Life in Marietta next week. Lindenwood travels to Provo to face BYU.