Rice takes Tier 1 title for seventh time
By Phil Gautschy
In the iYRA's Tier 1, history repeats itself; a lot.
Defending champion Brother Rice did it again, this time with an impressive second half and a 24-15 win over Morton in the championship match Tuesday at the Chicago Blaze fields in Lemont.
The match was pushed back a day due to weather.
The teams battled to a 5-5 draw in the first half. But after the break, Rice ripped off several long runs, and scored three straight tries, to break the game open.
“The second half we knew we had to come out firing,” Brother Rice outside center Conor Healy said. “Our forwards did a good job taking the ball in and that opened up some holes for us.”
On the opening possession of the game, Morton drove deep into Rice territory, but never could get over the try line.
Thirteen minutes into the game, Healy delivered a try for a 5-0 Rice lead.
Morton answered with 10 minutes left in the half. Rice tried to get the ball out of their end, but failed. Morton's Manny Aranda then pushed the ball in.
In the second half, Rice’s Chuck Busking broke through the Morton line and drove deep into Mustang territory. Maris Stallionis punctuated the drive with a try. The conversion gave Rice a 12-5 lead.
Six minutes later, Healy got around the right end and ran it in from about 30 meters for his second try of the night.
“Our backs have been our strength all year,” Brother Rice coach Brian Gilmartin said. “Conor Healy scored on that long run and really broke their back.”
Rice added its final try right up the middle to push the score to 24-5 with twelve minutes left.
Morton got scores late from Mike Waszkowski and Rey Gutierrez, who ran it in with about a minute left in the game.
“We made a couple of mistakes, but the couple of mistakes we made were big mistakes,” Morton coach Aaron Sweeney. “You can’t expect your kids to play perfect, but when you do make mistakes, you can’t make the big mistakes like we did. They exploited our mistakes very well.”
Rice's Healy was named the Man of the Match.
