The Pittsburgh Steeltoes entered their first Premier Rugby Sevens PR7s Championship final match Sunday boasting a league-high 123 points and 20 tries.
The Premier Rugby Sevens expansion Steeltoes couldn’t manage to maintain that offensive momentum, though, at a rain-drenched Audi Field in Washington, D.C.
The Steeltoes scored just one try in a 10-5 setback to the SoCal Rhinos x Loggerheads in a PR7s Championship final match that had its start delayed more than an hour by rainstorms that roared through the nation’s capital earlier in the evening.
“We put it out there, there’s no doubt,” Steeltoes coach Jason Kelly said. “Overall in terms of the summer, and the season, I would say it was an overwhelming success.
“Within the final itself,” he added, “we didn’t make the most of our opportunities, really. They were obviously a really, really good side with some very experienced guys.”
The Rhinos x Loggerheads won their title after falling to the Rocky Mountain Experts in the PR7s Championship finals each of the past two seasons.
Kelly said he was pleased with his team’s ability to “stick to its systems” and play strong defense in the championship match.
“It’s just a couple of little really uncharacteristic errors that we haven’t really done yet, or hadn’t done yet, and, yeah, that counts,” he said.
After Pittsburgh and SoCal battled through a scoreless first half, the Steeltoes took a 5-0 lead on a 26-yard try by Lance Williams with 5:55 remaining in the seven-minute second half.
Williams was only signed to the Steeltoes roster this week after team captain Ben Pinkelman, a former U.S. Olympian, was forced to miss the PR7s Championship matches with a concussion.
“He’s obviously a world-class player,” Kelly said of Pinkelman. “Whenever you lose someone of his quality it’s going to affect you, but the guys showed up really well.”
Kelly commended Williams’ ability to connect with his teammates very quickly in the run up to Sunday’s matches.
“He was great and showed some leadership during the week and is just a real quality guy,” Kelly said of Williams. ”He was a real pleasure to have.”
The Rhinos x Loggerheads would control the match from that point forward.
Jack Rampton scored a try for SoCal a little more than two minutes after the Steeltoes took their only lead of the contest.
PR7s Championship final MVP Branco Du Preez rounded out the scoring with a drop kick that gave the Rhinos x Loggerheads a five-point advantage they would not relinquish.
“We defended really, really well,” Kelly said. “We kind of stuck to our systems. We didn’t finish opportunities in the first half.”
Du Preez, who has the most caps in South African national team history, led the Rhinos x Loggerheads to their first victory of the day, 21-14, against the Experts.
The Steeltoes advanced to the PR7s Championship final match after defeating the Austin-based Texas Team, 19-12, in the semifinals Sunday.
Jerome Nale scored a pair of tries, while Tiaan Loots added another, to put the Texas Team out to a 12-0 lead, but the Steeltoes fought back to take control of the match.
Williams scored a try with four seconds remaining in the first half to cut into the Texas advantage before the Steeltoes’ Campbell Johnstone and John LeFevre each added a second-half try to round out the scoring.
The Steeltoes’ also defeated the Texas Team in an Eastern Conference Finals semifinal match, 33-5, last month at Highmark Stadium in Station Square.
“To beat Texas twice in a few weeks is hard to do,” Kelly said. “I was talking to the coaches of the Texas Team afterward, in all of these games it’s so 50-50. It’s mindset stuff. All the athletes are very similar, and the skill level is very similar.
“It’s really kind of how you show up in those big, big moments,” he added. “We played the best rugby of the summer in terms of some of our structures offensively and defensively. We were very happy after that and very confident going into the final.”
Despite falling just a couple of minutes short of their first Premier Rugby Sevens championship, the Steeltoes have a lot to build upon for next season.
The Steeltoes finished the season 4-2, scored a league-high 21 tries and allowed a league-low 12. Pittsburgh’s 128 total points scored was most in the Premier Rugby Sevens, ahead of the Experts who finished with 106 on the season.
“The boys showed a lot of heart and really jelled and really molded themselves into a great team,” Kelly said. “Outstanding stuff for an expansion franchise to be a bounce of the ball away from winning its first championship in its first year. It’s pretty cool.”
North Hills graduate and former Penn State player Scout Cheeks, who is a member of the Memphis-based Southern Headliners women’s team roster, also represented her hometown at the PR7s Championships final in the nation’s capital.
The Southern Headliners fell to the New York Locals, 17-14, Sunday before dropping a 10-7 consolation-match decision to the Experts later in the afternoon.
The Northern Loonies won the women’s PR7s Championship final match, 21-12, against the Locals. The Steeltoes women’s team did not qualify for the PR7s Championship final.
John is a copy editor and page designer at the Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at jsanta@unionprogress.com.