What will your legacy be?
It’s a question many ask themselves. It’s the same question head coach Becky Carlson is challenging her team with heading into the 2024 season.
“This group is interested in a legacy, and they’re interested in carving out their own,” Carlson said. “It’s kind of a combination of both.”
Quinnipiac rugby is a program filled with legacy. Three national championships. A bronze medal. It’s rich in winning and tradition.
But that gold standard of bringing national championships to Hamden has gone to the wayside in recent years, falling short of the mountaintop ever since 2017.
“After we won the third national championship there was this feeling that these new athletes that came in, as well as the athletes that heard about it, were like, ‘We want to be our own team, we want to be individuals,” Carlson said.
“You have to make your own traditions. Don’t just say you want to reject the old ones. You’re actually going to have to make a new legacy. And we didn’t, because we didn’t win for the next three years.”
These Bobcats have an opportunity to rewrite that legacy — one that they believe could bring a fourth title to the program.
“I feel like this year we’re all more on the same page, we have that legacy, and we’ve won the national championship,” graduate student lock Anna Van Dyk said. “I think we all see that and we understand that, and we all have that same goal, that is what we want to do this year.”
That road back to the top started in Hamden, in August, when games weren’t being played but the work is still being put in. Carlson believes this group is starting off on the right foot in its quest for glory.
“I think that in the last five years we haven’t had a quicker start to preseason than this year,” Carlson said.
The fast start can be credited to two factors: focus and experience.
“Typically we have four focuses,” Carlson said. “This year it’s go to class and win a national championship. We’re being laser focused on this.”
The experience comes in with the return of Quinnipiac’s two All-Americans, graduate student fullback Kat Storey and Van Dyk.
“Anna and Kat are back as All-Americans,” Carlson said. “When you get kids back for a fifth year, it’s always a bonus.”
Another returner expected to make an impact on the pitch is senior flanker Lily Cartwright. The Livermore, California, native missed all of last season after suffering a broken foot in a preseason scrimmage.
“Lily Cartwright, being back and not being able to play at all last year from a broken foot when we played Nova Scotia, but she’s back now, and we’re anxious to see what she’s got in store for us,” Carlson said.
Carlson is also expecting her newest class of recruits to make a major impact in 2024. And it seems like they’ve arrived exactly as advertised.
“I haven’t been surprised by any of them,” Carlson said. “I think every one of them has come in and they’ve done what we’ve asked them to do, in their prep to get here, and then as they are out on the field. We came in here and knew this is going to be a lights out class.”
One notable freshman is Fia Whelan, who is sliding into the fly-half role, a position that isn’t the easiest to pick up.
“She kind of stepped into the fly-half role and she’s only 17,” freshman prop Lily Morris said. “That’s quite a difficult position for someone who hasn’t got the senior experience, but she’s taken to it quite well.”
The mix of talented veterans and freshmen should bode well for the Bobcats. But come late fall they’re still going to have to line up against the best the league has to offer, Dartmouth and Harvard.
“I think we mutate a little bit and morph when we play (Dartmouth and Harvard), and a little bit of it comes apart based upon everything that’s up here, and not in the tools that we have,” Carlson said. “So it’s sticking to the game plan and being committed to that, and knowing what championship actions look like, not just championship behavior.”
Big Green has been a bit of a boogeyman for Quinnipiac in recent years.
“I think it goes back to not really necessarily understanding the legacy, like we walked out on that field and Harvard and Dartmouth are like, we don’t want to play Quinnipiac,” Carlson said. To have that script flipped, where you’re having to tell your players guys this is doable. They’re not more talented than we are.”
The Bobcats’ first step in writing their new legacy ended in a 17-17 draw with Brown. They also won’t have to wait long to go toe-to-toe with the reigning 2023 national champion, Harvard, on Sept. 6.
Quinnipiac and Carlson already have a legacy wrapped in gold. But as Carlson sat in her office, surrounded by memories of national titles past, the goal for 2024 seemed crystal clear.
“Win a national championship.”
