Golden Medals: Cal Rugby are PAC Rugby champs again; Beach Volleyball tops Stanford

Cal Rugby destroys UCLA, USC, and Stanford to another PAC Rugby title

Since the formation of the PAC Rugby conference however many years ago, California Golden Bears have come out on top. That streak continued after the Bears’ dominant weekend down in LA.

Bears defeated host UCLA 88-7 before a squad of reserved dominated USC 91-7. On Wednesday from the friendly confines of Witter Field, Golden Bears retain the scrum axe with a 120 victory over Stanford (mostly sincerely, thanks to the Stanford squad for showing up and honoring this tradition!).

Bears will now rest for a bit before a huge showdown against local rival and top ranked (according to D1A Rugby) St. Mary next Saturday from Witter Field. That match will be the regular season finale before Varsity Cup national championship play.

Cal Beach Volleyball beats Stanford to remain a perfect 6-0 on the season

Golden Bears are a perfect 6-0 on the season after beating rival Stanford in #BigSandSpike #BigBeachSpike #BigSpikeOnTheBeach today (tell us what should be the name of the Beach Volleyball version of the Big Spike in the comment section below!).

Bears won in court 3 (Stepanof/Gaffney) 21-19, 21-13; court 4 (Lindahl/Anderson) 13-21, 21-19, 15-11, and court 5 (Gustafson/Neff) 21-17, 21-16. The pair of Gustafson/Neff are now a perfect 6-0 on the year.

With the weekend’s 3 wins, the Bears are now a program best 11th overall in the country according to DiG Magazine.

Interestingly, program depth (despite still virtually no scholarships?) has been the difference for the Bears so far on the year with the bottom 3 pairs doing so well on the early season. Given that most Beach Volleyball programs in the country (other than maybe USC) are likely lacking scholarships (for now), maybe Cal’s bigger student pool to draw walk-on student-athletes from have been the difference?

Cal Women’s Gymnastics in Pac-12 Championship this Saturday

Bears (196.400) will be in session 1 (1 PM PT) along side Arizona (195.710), Arizona State (194.740), and host Stanford (195.610). Being the highest seed in the session, Bears (5th seed overall) got to choose to start on the vault.

Top seed UCLA (197.500), 2nd seed Utah (197.355), 3rd seed OSU (196.875), and 4th seed Washington (196.480) will be in the night session starting at 6 PM PT.

Pac-12 Networks will have live coverage of all of the action on Saturday.

Team regional qualifying scores (RQS) are calculated on the teams’ six best regular-season meet scores. Three of these scores must be from an away competition. The highest score is eliminated then the remaining five scores are averaged.

Time to make The Farm a Bear Territory!

Cal Lacrosse won their 2nd game of the season, defeats Marquette 18-11

Golden Bears (2-7) are now halfway to match the win total from last year. A big day by senior Jena Fritts (5 goals, 1 assist) led the way for the Bears. Junior attacker Kate Mattimore added a hat trick to the cause. In goal, sophomore Jenny Wilkens collected 12 saves.

Bears actually just played 3 matches in 6 days. Unfortunately, the previous two saw the Bears just being edged by Williams and Mary 18-19 on Saturday and then a 8-17 loss to UConn on Tuesday.

Bears will have 10 days off before their next match at San Diego State on Sunday, March 26th.

GO BEARS!