Day one of the Women’s Club 7s Championship has ended, and no pool went without at least one entertaining match. For Pool A, that match occurred in round three between Seattle and Chicago North Shore. Both sides were coming off solid wins over NOVA 2, although the Breakers’ 32-5 win outshone North Shore’s 17-0 victory.

The majority of the first half was not pretty. The teams tested each other’s outside speed and found them to be comparable. Seattle tried to make some ground up the middle, but that wasn’t as successful.

“North Shore have some bigger girls, so we couldn’t get the same penetration through the forwards that we’re used to,” Seattle coach Evan Haigh said. “We forced a couple of passes early on, and that has a flow-on effect, especially in a 7s game. We had a couple of handling errors and came out of our defensive line as well.”

As a result, North Shore spent most of their time in Seattle’s end during the first seven minutes. But to the Breakers’ credit, their defense kept out the likes of dangerous strikers Kate Daley, Lauren Doyle and Nia Williams.

Finally, a linebreak puts Seattle on the front foot and the Breakers find themselves inside North Shore’s 22 meter. There’s a turnover and a North Shore player attempts to clear – a good decision considering there was no sweeper – but the kick went straight in a gaggle of Breakers only meters away. Megan Sanders scooped up the ball and connected with Carrie White back inside for the try, 5-0.

Into the second half, White put her team into scoring contention again with another long linebreak. Doyle tracked the scrumhalf down to stop the immediate threat, but the field position eventually turned into a dive-over try from White, 10-0.

“It was the first time we were actually working from sideline to sideline,” Haigh said of White’s second try. “We were the able to control the set piece and open up some space for Carrie to go through.”

North Shore was far from finished. Down 10 points midway through the second half, the Chicago side built a nice offensive movement from midfield, offloading just before contact to a teammate looping. Sara Nester took the final pass around the corner, then sliced back inside when a defender slid across the openfield. Doyle converted the centered try, and now North Shore was only down three points.

With time nearly gone, it appeared as if North Shore was going to outlast Seattle, as Madison Kissner found an outside lane and galloped toward the tryline. White angled across the field and meters from the tryline, engulfed Kissner. She positioned her body perfectly so Kissner couldn’t ground the ball, although they were both in the try zone at the point of contact. That play represented the contest so well – North Shore was so close to beating Seattle, but the Breakers had a little more in the tank.

“We put in the same amount of heart,” Haigh compared the two wins, “but we didn’t execute the way we wanted. North Shore threw a different style at us, and it threw us out of kilter. We have some improvement points for tomorrow, but you don’t win championships on day one; you do that on day two.”

Seattle will play Emerald City, which finished 2-1 in Pool B and upset the Boston Belles 22-19, in tomorrow’s Cup Quarterfinals. Chicago North Shore will take on Pool A victor, Youngbloodz, in their playoff game. In both cases, the opponents are very familiar with each other, having traded tournament victories all summer.

As for NOVA 2, they’ll head to the Bowl Quarterfinals tomorrow and take on Philadelphia. These two MARFU sides are also familiar with one another, and if the standings hold, then NOVA 2 is favored in that match-up.

DAY ONE STANDINGS