The Yellow Jackets’ men’s rugby team continued their fine form as they moved to 6-0 in the East Coast Rugby Conference last Thursday with a notable performance over University of Massachusetts, defeating them 45-15.

AIC started the game off extremely well as they ran in two tries in the opening 16 minutes. From there, they didn’t look like they were going to take their foot off the gas pedal.

The Yellow Jackets didn’t really have time to prepare for this game as they only had three days off after their last league game. AIC captain Skylar Adams said that he felt that the team could quickly adapt from one game to the next.

AIC head coach Rob Guiry went on to say that “the players did well to look after their bodies in such a small amount of time knowing that they had to play against a strong physical UMass team the following week.

“We wanted to assert our dominance in the pack and show that we were the ones in control of the contact area early. Our first 20 minutes was lights out and it was our game from there,” Guiry added.

They set the tone from the start and were rewarded with a penalty kick which Michele Magistali converted. Moments after, senior winger Christian Adams scored the first try of the match after a nicely weighted kick from fly half Jihad Khabir which allowed Adams to chase down. Then it was Khabir’s turn to get on the score sheet and Magistali converted the try making it 17-0.

As the second half started AIC continued to put pressure on UMass and it showed, as Adams and Khabir scored yet again, making the score 38-5 after 50 minutes.

Once the Yellow Jackets felt like they had a commanding lead they used all of their substitutions, allowing the team to keep their intensity.

Senior hooker Jonathan Ortiz got his first A-side try. Magistali converted, and in fact didn’t miss any kick attempts all evening, logging seven conversions and that opening penalty.

Sophomore center Marcus McIntyre stated: “we are strong. We may bend, but we never break.” This shows that AIC looks like a team that can handle themselves in the contact area and it showed with the display they put on against a strong Umass team.

Junior Prop Stephen Fobes agreed.

“The team has been working hard these past couple of days on tackling and it was nice to see it shown in the game,” Fobes said.

AIC looks forward to their matchup against Boston College on October 29th for the conference as both teams are undefeated.