STANFORD – It couldn’t have gone any higher for the Stanford girls’s rugby workforce.
Enjoying on its dwelling turf towards rival Cal, the Cardinal earned its second consecutive USA Rugby Girls’s D1 Nationwide Championship Saturday evening with a dominant 57-25 win.
It was the sixth general title for Stanford (11-0), who hadn’t received since 2008 earlier than profitable the championship final 12 months in Houston after a five-hour lightning delay.
However whereas that win was removed from dwelling and was performed in entrance of a sparse crowd due to the climate, this one got here with packed stands at Steuber Rugby Stadium, which was internet hosting the finals for the primary time since 2012.
When the ultimate whistle blew, Stanford college students poured onto the sector to affix the gamers in celebration.
“Being here and seeing everyone in the stands and seeing the energy when people rushed onto the field, it was honestly a little overwhelming,” mentioned sophomore Kiersten Lees, who was named MVP.
Stanford returned all however two gamers from final 12 months’s workforce. Moreover two shut video games towards Cal Poly, who received the D2 championship earlier on Saturday, Stanford’s closest win this season was 36-21 towards Cal two months in the past. The Cardinal superior to the finals by beating Arizona 70-12 and Western Washington 42-10.
“Honestly it means everything,” Lees mentioned. “Coming off of a championship, there was a lot of pressure to perform to reach that same standard, and I’m proud that we had the discipline and the tenacity to go back and put in the hard work.”
Stanford set the tone early, scoring the primary 14 factors and taking a 26-5 lead.
“We knew they were going to come out hard and try to crush us in the first 10 minutes,” Cardinal captain Leila Wang Gowett mentioned. “We were thinking about showing them in the first set piece, in the first play, how can we show them we want this more.”
Stanford celebrates after profitable towards the California Golden Bears in the course of the girls’s faculty rugby Spring 2025 USA Rugby XVs Nationwide Championships at Steuber Rugby Stadium in Stanford, Calif., on Saturday, April 19, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Space Information Group)
Cal bought inside 26-15 with 34 minutes left, however Lees scored two tries in three minutes to place Stanford again up by 21. Freshman Chisa Ogaki then took benefit of a turnover and ran 60 meters untouched for a attempt to seal the win.
Stanford coach Richard Ashfield credited the workforce’s kicking sport and defensive stress, together with the bodily influence of subs Hope Addhanome-Shipman and Madisyn Cunningham, for the championship-deciding second-half run.
It was the primary championship sport look for a Cal program established in 1998.
“For them, there’s so many things that they’re adjusting to in this game,” Cal coach Katie Chou mentioned of her gamers. “There’s a pressure to this game, being in this type of crowd, being in this high-visibility game, that we just flat-out have not experienced before, so I think what you saw is that there were lulls while we were adjusting, but we finished strong. Every year we keep climbing. We were nowhere close to this last year, so this program’s going to keep rolling.”
The Cardinal ultimately scored 31 straight factors to increase the result in 57-15 till Cal scored two tries within the remaining two minutes.
“What I’ve been thinking the whole season is after last year we got hungry and we got a taste of what it was like to win the national championship, so we came back here thinking that we wanted to do it again and pushing ourselves,” Gowett mentioned. “Tonight, under the lights, all that hard work really showed.”
Gowett mentioned no Stanford participant had performed aggressive rugby earlier than coming to The Farm. Some, like Ogaki, hadn’t picked up a rugby ball till seven months in the past.
Whereas Stanford celebrated, Cal supporters additionally got here onto the sector and fashioned a human tunnel for the Bears to run via, honoring this system’s most profitable season to this point.
“I’m proud of this team,” Chou mentioned. “We’ve never been here before and unfortunately the score didn’t go our way, but like I said to them in the circle, we’ll be back. We’ll definitely be back. They didn’t get all the way, but they’ve made history.”
