Our 2nd Player of the Week was awarded to Sami Tripi, a Junior on the BGSU Women's Rugby team. Sami was nominated by her coach, Roger Switzer, who was quoted on her recent performance against Kent State,

        "accounted for 15 of our 17 points. Made tremendous defensive plays and was very generous in her passing and getting players involved."

Sami was able to give us an honest and open interview, giving an insight into her history with rugby, the background of BGSU Women's Rugby, and how the team is planning to compete this year. Our recap of the interview is below: 

    Question 1: "How does the impact of women's rugby competing at BGSU connect to your team?"

            "So for me, I so I've been playing rugby for six years now and it's hard to really, like, make friends in college. So joining a club is very encouraged, and I have now a very solid friend group just through my team and we have a lot of fun and we also are very competitive. It brings a lot of growth for not just as a team, but as us individually."

    Question 2: "I know you guys went to national Sevens last year in the spring. What about that experience did you guys get ready to take away more than anything else? What was your biggest takeaways from that?

            "Oh, wow. So that, that was our first time to ever make it to Nationals, ever. And this team has been established, I believe, like 1978 or so. So it's been a very big accomplishment and it was very rewarding. It didn't, obviously, we didn't we win ... it was still a great opportunity to have, and I hope that we can make it again this upcoming season of this up upcoming seventh season."

    Question 3: "What can students on campus do to support women's rugby?"

            "So we do have some, like, we do fundraisers. ?Obviously joining, like, I feel like our numbers aren't as big as we want this year, but joining would help support our team, for sure. And support. Just showing up to our games. I remember first game last year, because I'm a transfer student. ?I came from, actually Lander University, which is a school in South Carolina and I played varsity rugby down there on the NCAA team. So I transferred there and the first game against Grand Valley last year, there was like 200 people there. Granted, it was for like, they came for the men's game, but we had our game before theirs and it was just so surreal and it felt really empowering in a way. ?And I wish that we had bigger crowds because, you know, it's just really our parents right now. So if the students could come out, ... but it would be really cool to see more students at our games." 

    Question 4: "What does it mean for your program to be successful?"

            "...We're definitely having a much more competitive season this year. We're playing harder teams than we did last season. ?And it's been making our team obviously more successful from that because we just played against Kent. And even though we lost against them, just by like five points, I can tell that we grew more as a team and we're playing against Ball State this upcoming Saturday, so we'll have to see how we do, how that translates into into this game." 

    Question 5: "What is your guys' team goal for the rest of the season?"

            "... Making it to regionals would be great. ?And because we made it to regionals last year, which we lost against Cincinnati, but we're playing against Cincinnati in our season. ... if we can beat them, then maybe we can play, you know, harder teams. ....?It was Cincinnati and Syracuse last year, and I think we lost both games, but not too, not bad, bad, but I think we'll be playing to have a more competitive season this year, will make us better, for sure."

Big thank you and congratulations to Sami Tripi for being our 2nd Player of the Week. 

To follow along with the rest of the season or to keep up with the team, be sure to check out their social media platforms listed below: 

    - Facebook: BGSU Women's Club Rugby
    - Instagram: @bgsuwrugby