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Aspen Gents rugby wins DII championship over Haggis, qualifies for regionals

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Austin Colbert
  

Aspen coach and player Ben Mitchell, center, chases down a loose ball for a critical try to end the first half as the Gentlemen of Aspen Rugby Club plays Haggis in the Rocky Mountain Rugby Premiership D2 finals on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, at Willits Rugby Field. The Gents won, 28-22.
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times

The true summit remains in the distance for the Gentlemen of Aspen Rugby Club, but it looks a whole lot closer after winning Saturday’s Rocky Mountain Rugby Premiership DII championship.

“It feels great for the team, for the club, for everyone involved. All that hard work paying off, it makes it all worth it in the end,” Gents player Chris Campbell said. “More wear and tear on the body. You get a bit more battered and bruised, but you find ways to get through it. At the end of the day, we had some boys who came out and gave a huge performance.”

The Gents beat Utah’s Haggis RFC on Saturday afternoon, 28-22, a game played at Willits Rugby Field in the midvalley after the club was unable to clear Aspen’s Wagner Park of recent snowfall. The contest brought together the top two teams from the five team RMR D2 league, which played a round-robin schedule throughout the fall.

With 32 points in the season standings and a 6-2 record, Aspen was given the right to host as the No. 1 seed, while Haggis earned the No. 2 spot with their 30 points. The Denver Water Dogs finished third with 23 points, the Denver Barbarians were fourth with 18 points, and Boulder came in fifth with 5 points.

“Pretty broken but pretty over the moon, as well. That was pretty unbelievable. We have an amazing habit of winning tight games. It’s stressful, but it’s so rewarding,” Aspen player and coach Ben Mitchell said. “We started really well, which we wanted to do, especially against a team that traveled a long way. Didn’t quite perform as well in the second half but managed to do enough to win it.”


Saturday’s finale was plenty physical, and it was a critical kick and score from Mitchell in the final seconds before halftime that extended the Gents’ lead to 21-8 at the break. Haggis pulled back within a single try at 28-22 in the final minutes of the match, and a final defensive stand by the Gents was needed to preserve the win.

The teams had split their two regular-season contests, Haggis winning 65-17 at home on Sept. 28, and Aspen taking the second game on Oct. 12 back in the Roaring Fork Valley, 47-46.

“It was definitely physical. Haggis had a couple of big boys there, and they had some skill players to swing it out wide. But we stuck to our system that Ben’s been teaching us in training and pulled it out in the end,” Campbell said. “Just getting to that next level, trying to work our way back up to being relevant on the national scene, it’s super big for the club. We’ve been there, and we want to get back to that. It’s still a long journey. We are up for it.”

Snow falls in the background as the Gentlemen of Aspen Rugby Club plays Haggis in the Rocky Mountain Rugby Premiership D2 finals on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, at Willits Rugby Field. The Gents won, 28-22.
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times

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Aspen is currently chasing the club’s 10th national championship, most of the prior won in the 1990s and 2000s. This is the Gents first season playing at the DII level since roughly that same time frame, and Saturday’s win qualifies them for the regional finals next spring.

Aspen will be one of four teams playing in the Northern regional finals, scheduled for the first weekend of May in Springfield, Missouri. The regional winner then qualifies for the national finals, held about a month later.

“It’s a huge amount of work. We’ve actually been training together since April, so we’ve been at it for over six months now,” Mitchell said.

“The timing of it works well for us. Ski season is about to start. We are not going to do anything probably until March now. We’ll recover and freshen up over the winter and come ready in the spring. … It’s what we want to do. Our goal is to win a national championship, and we’ve taken the first step to get them there.”

acolbert@aspentimes.com

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