The West DIA season got off to an interesting start as Air Force thumped a very good Utah team 66-26 Saturday in Colorado Springs.

The Zoomies were led by captain Ben Burmester, who was prominent in the scoring and caused the Utes fits on defense. The back row players, including Jason Kyles, Elliott Higgin, and Johnny Griffith were all outstanding, working the breakdowns and ensuring continuity of possession. Gregor Kerdikoshvili was also tough in open play and continued to provide Air Force with points from his goalkicking.

“We are starting to gel quickly,” said Head Coach Denny Meredith. “We have a lot of returners and I think we learned a lot from last year.”

It was basically a new coaching staff last year and the coaching group, led by Meredith but with former Eagle James Paterson, Zack Kennedy, and others is settling in, and it is beginning to show.

In addition, with the Air Force development team in the Rocky Mountain DII league, all of the players have a conference game to play. 

“We are seeing the benefits of the B side being in a conference already,” said Meredith. 

For Utah, it was a tough day as they made too many mistakes and Air Force punished them.

“We take several positives away from this one,” said Head Coach Jon Law, who is using the fall to develop the squad. We enjoyed watching several young men get their first taste of college rugby. Today's match was a bit too much for the current skill set of some of them, but others, like first-year player Kelsin Pupunu, showed good promise. Depth in our program continues to hinder us.  We are optimistic that problem will be mitigated in the spring.” 

Pupunu, Gabe Rufflin, and Josh Webber all showed well for Utah.