Poughkeepsie, NY - The Vassar College Women's Rugby team rolled to its fifth straight victory on Saturday afternoon as the Brewers defeated local foe Marist 67-5. Senior Caeli Porette (Stony Point, NY) tallied a team-high five tries for the Brewers as they improved to 5-0 on the season.

The opening exchanges through the first 10 to 15 minutes were fairly even with both the Poughkeepsie schools giving a fair account of themselves. Marist had the first possession and made some progress forward but were met with good tackles from the Vassar defenders. There were a couple of missed tackles and that led to some field position for Marist but then the hosts gave away a couple of penalties and Vassar marched downfield.

Vassar's first try was from a short range penalty when Asia Baker, probably feeling very confident after her hat-trick of tries last week against Rensselaer, plunged over. Zoe Lynch kicked the conversion and Vassar led 7-0. Lynch has been practicing her place kicking and did very well on the afternoon connecting on six of 11 conversions.

Vassar's attack was relatively effective in that most of the time the ball carrier was getting over the gain line despite a few solid tackles from the Marist defense. After Marist turned the ball over in its own 22 the inside center made an impressive line break and sprinted into the Vassar half. She was slowed down by Vassar fullback Claire Zickl and that allowed Sophia Bailey who was racing back to make a tackle. The attack stalled and Vassar forced a turnover. The Brewers managed to move the ball to Caeli Porette who exploited the space available in the broken field and scored under the posts to make it 14-0 after Lynch had done the honors.

The next Vassar possession began at a scrum centerfield on the halfway line and after 16 phases Caeli Porette went over in the right hand corner for a good team try and a lead of 19-0.

Marist responded well at this point and their scrum managed to get a push on driving Vassar back. Lauren Showalter at Number 8 dealt well with the pressure and in fact was a standout performer on the day but Marist did get some ball at the breakdown and managed to get down the field into the Vassar 22. From a scrum the blindside defense was initially successful but a Marist player did succeed in getting over for a try following a ruck and it was now 19-5.

Marist might have had a small foothold to get back into the game but two quick tries put a damper on that possibility. First, a bizarre score when the Vassar left wing Zoe Lynch gathered a failed clearance kick as the Marist center tried to connect with the ball right in front of her goal line but the ball went directly to Lynch and in a flash it was 26-5.

Then from the restart, Sophia Bailey gathered the ball and ran from inside the Vassar 22, a full 75 plus yards, to score in the right hand corner and give the Brewers a 31-5 advantage. Vassar fullback, Claire Zickl, put the icing on the first half cake when the ball was swung wide and she outsprinted the defense to score in the left hand corner to take a 36-5 lead into the half.

Marist started the second half with a bang taking the ball at the restart and then going forward at pace and offloading. However, a loose ball fell to Vassar and found its way into the hands of Caeli Porette who wrong footed a couple of defenders and went over from about 65 yards as Vassar was now lead 43-5. 

Substitutions were made late in the contest as Porette not only had three tries to this point but also they had made a number of good tackles. This was only an appetizer as they would go on to get two more tries for a total of five for an impressive all-around day for Porette.

Vassar prop forward Andie Authers took a ball at pace from some 15 yards out and scored a good try and later freshman Yael Tuckman also a prop went over for a score. Three of the four props that played made the scorers sheet.

Vassar continues its road trip next weekend as they head to Fairfield University for a 3:30 p.m. kickoff

Tries: Asia Baker (1), Caeli Porette (5), Zoe Lynch (1), Sophia Bailey (1), Claire Zickl (1), Andie Authers (1), Yael Tuckman (1).
Cons: Zoe Lynch (6)

Team: 15 Claire Zickl 14 Jamie Marinez 13 Caeli Porette 12 Isabel Rodriguez 11 Zoe Lynch 10 Kasey Drake 9 Sophia Bailey 1 Andie Authers 2 Claire Dwyer 3 Asia Baker 4 Grace Skakel 5 Sylvia Martinez 6 Sam Tang 7 Yasmeen Kassem-Scott 8 Lauren Showalter. 
Subs: Ariel Birnbaum for Samuel Tang, Julia Wolff for Grace Skakel, Katie Canavan for Claire Dwyer, Julie Geller for Asia Baker, Yael Tuckman for Andie Authers, Sadie Hammarhead for Claire Zickl.