1823 may have crushed the competition yesterday in the Rock n Roll 7s tournament in Cleveland, but coach Paul Holmes is not satisfied to stop there.

“I would say we repeated what we did last year,” Holmes told RUGBYMag. “I don’t think we can get caught in the standings, but we need to carry through into the Midwest tournament.”

The club fielded two teams in the tournament, with the A-side going undefeated in pool play and winning the tournament final over Cincinnati, 31-19. The B-side also went undefeated in their pool and could have made it to the final had they not been beaten by the A-side team in the semifinals, 40-12.

“I think there isn’t a lot of competition at these events,” Holmes said. “I think it was bad that it was scheduled the same weekend as the Lakefront tournament.”

Holmes added that 1823’s toughest opponent was probably Cincinnati in the final, but even that wasn’t really a competitive match. “We got a lead early and ran some subs. The competition was pretty weak, and the fact that our B-team made the semifinals shows that.”

“We’re very hard to stop with ball in hand,” Holmes added. “We score a lot very quickly. We just need to work on our first-up defense. We should’ve gone through that tournament without conceding a try. We’ll be focusing a lot on that.”

1823 now sits comfortably at the head of the Midwest standings with 22 points, a full 10 points above second-place Chicago Lions. But Holmes isn’t letting his side get complacent. “It’ll be two years that we finished at the top, but last year was a complete failure because we choked in the Midwest tournament,” he stated. “We can’t do that again.”