By RICHIE HALL
Normally Hamilton Southeastern and Fishers are rivals, but this past weekend, the rugby teams from both schools came together to win a state championship.
Playing under the Hamilton Southeastern name, the team won the Rugby Indiana High School Fall 7s championship, which took place in Elkhart. The HSE team defeated Penn 21-12 in the final game.
The team consisted of 13 Southeastern and seven Fishers players. HSE coaches Matt Kwiatkowski and Troy Dixon, and Fishers coach John Hurley collaborated with each other; Kwiatkowski said there “was a lot of continuity” between the players from both schools.
“It was a very rewarding season as the team comprised of seven Fishers players and 13 HSE players who mostly had not every played with each other come together and play rugby at a very high level,” said Kwiatkowski. “Rugby is not a game that you can win at a high level with a few standouts and they played that way through the beginning of the season but put it all together in the end.”
Southeastern went undefeated in the tournament, first defeating Avon 26-10 and Cincinnati St. Xavier in pool play. HSE then beat Fort Wayne Carroll 33-10 in the semi-finals before its win over Penn in the title game.
Southeastern’s final score came from Isaac Haneline, on what Kwiatkowski called “a great play off of a kickoff return” to seal the game. Donovan Riley made a no-look pass to Haneline, who ran to a 60-meter score as time was winding down. That gave HSE a 21-7 lead and sealed the game.
Riley was named the MVP of the tournament. He and Haneline were joined in the semi-final and championship matches by Josh Everett, Zach Swingle, Ethan Hackenberg, Anthony Arnce, Jackson Williams, Daniel Nevins, Jaylen Webb, Jacob Chastain.
Players that competed in the pool matches were Mon’dale Hernandez, Joey Atwell, Aaron Gonzales, Daniel Tully, and Jacob Hays. Other regular season players were Dakota Duncan, Dash Decaudin, Daniel Holt, Isaac Ledford, and Joshua Tilaar.
The Fishers and Southeastern teams combined to go 19-2-1 in the regular season, but had to drop to one team for the championships, as there weren’t enough players to field two sides because of Fall Break.
“A few of the Fishers players were making comments about how they didn’t want to put on the royal blue jersey in the beginning, even joking that they were worried that it would ‘burn their skin,’ but in the end, they played great team rugby and scored the championship sealing try (similar to a touchdown in football) on a pass from a Fishers player to an HSE player for the score with nearly every player touching the ball prior to that pass,” said Kwiatkowski.
The coach was also excited about the result for another reason.
“I am a graduate of Penn so it was pretty exciting getting to play and defeat both the team that I played for in high school as well as my first rugby coach, Bart Bottorff who was very happy to see one of his old players still involved with the game and succeed and was very complimentary talking about the way our boys played,” said Kwiatkowski. In addition, Rugby Indiana executive director Wayne Eells told the coaches that Southeastern’s semi-final match against Carroll was the best high school 7s match he had ever seen.
Ten teams were part of three pools, mostly coming from central and northern Indiana. Carmel, Noblesville, Westfield and Brownsburg all had teams compete at state. Four teams also had an additional team there; they competed in a “festival” pool, along with a team from Angola in northeastern Indiana. Several girls teams competed as well, including sides from Fishers, Westfield and Carmel.
The Hamilton Southeastern and Fishers rugby teams combined to win the state championship at the Rugby Indiana High School Fall 7s tournament in Elkhart this past weekend. HSE went undefeated in the tournament, beating Penn 21-12 in the final game to claim the championship. (Photos provided)
Congratulations on the win!!