SARANAC LAKE — Locals Kevin Morgan and Dave Snyder were two of the first people gearing up for the local Mountaineers Rugby Club practice last Tuesday evening. Just a few miles down the road, Kevin’s brother Forrest was tending to a varsity lacrosse game as the Saranac Lake Central School District’s athletic director, likely wishing he was at practice.
You wouldn’t be able to tell from just a glance, but the three were a little more than 50 hours removed from helping guide the Syracuse Chargers to a USA Club Rugby XVs Division III national championship in Lemont, Illinois.
The Chargers defeated the Florida-based Brevard Old Red Eyes 46-44 in the national championship on Sunday, May 17. It’s a game that Snyder described as the greatest athletic event he’s ever been a part of.
At two separate points, Syracuse trailed by 17 — once at the start and again in the second half. And of course, in dramatic fashion, the Chargers won the game with a last minute try from Ben Mosseau.
Forrest and Kevin, who have basically been playing rugby with the Mountaineers since they could walk, said this might’ve been the greatest game they’ve ever been a part of. And that’s saying a lot, especially for Kevin, who played for Major League Rugby’s Chicago Hounds.
But that’s exactly why he loves this sport so much.
“Every year, I’m like, ‘oh, that’s the coolest thing I’ll do,’” Kevin said. “I’ll play in the Can-Am rugby tournament and I’m like ‘that’s the coolest thing to ever do.’ Psych! I’ll go play Major League Rugby in Chicago. Then I was like, ‘that is definitely the coolest thing I will do.’ Psych! ‘Let’s have a wild game out in Chicago in the National Championship.’ So you never know, the game’s awesome and it’s always a ton of fun.”
But this game might be hard to top for a while. Teams rarely come back from a 17-0 deficit, and they somehow did it twice.
Funny enough, trailing early seems to be how Chargers games go, Forrest said.
“We go down every single game,” he said. “Somebody scored on us, and somebody made a joke right through the beginning, ‘It wouldn’t be Syracuse Rugby if we weren’t down to start the game.’”
Miraculously, the Chargers dug themselves out of a hole twice … and a big reason for that was the local trio.
Kevin, who started and played every minute of the contest, scored the first try, igniting the Chargers’ first scoring run in the first half to even the game at 20-20 at halftime.
But again, the Old Red Eyes caught fire, claiming a 44-27 lead after the break.
Syracuse cut the deficit to 10 late in the contest, on a try from Zach Dahar — followed by a successful conversion from Kevin. However, it wasn’t until Snyder scored a try that opened up the contest when he scored a try with less than five minutes remaining.
While Snyder, a Lake Placid high school gym teacher, started the game on the bench, he knew he was going to have to make an impact for his team when he finally got on the field.
“I’m lucky enough that I was able to score to help us in the right position,” Snyder said. “But (it was because of the) facilitating from my teammates. I mean, Kevin was the one securing the ruck that got that ball to me. So it was an everybody, full team kind of thing. Obviously, it was just really cool to be able to contribute and help and be a part of it.”
As Brevard started gaining ground, nearing the try-zone, Forrest laid out a hit, jarring the ball loose, which gave possession back to Syracuse.
“When you’re in that mindset of, ‘Hey, we need the ball back, you just kind of got to put your body on the line,’” Forrest said. “That’s what we talked about all week with everybody throughout the weekend. When the opportunity was there, I just threw his shoulder in and luckily popped the ball out.”
With the ball back in the hands of the Chargers and less than two minutes to go, Kevin said the gameplan became simple: Give the ball to their fastest players in open space.
And that player just so happened to be Mosseau.
“We just kept feeding our forwards to an edge so we could spread out the whole entire field,” Kevin said. “Once we saw it was wide enough, we just ripped it right to him.”
And it worked in their favor.
Forrest joked that the team was just glad that the game was finally over. It was hot and humid, and they probably hadn’t slept a lot on their long drive from Saranac Lake.
“But once everybody realized, like ‘holy moly, we actually won,’ it was just awesome,” he said. “That’s as big as it gets for us now and it was awesome.”
Competing at nationals is something Forrest and Kevin had talked about doing for a while now. And they were glad to have finally done it.
“We would have played rugby all over the country, but we’ve never been able to kind of be a part of a group like that and make a run,” Forrest said.
The three are all members of the Mountaineers Rugby Club, and while the Mountaineers are a dominant team, there’s a lack of other competitive men’s rugby teams in the area.
“We just wanted somewhere to go play that wasn’t the Mountaineers, because obviously we don’t have a league or a competitive team within 50 miles,” Kevin said.
After reaching out to some of his friends from college — SUNY Oswego — he found this team. Kevin first played with the Chargers last year, while Forrest and Snyder joined this season.
For Snyder it still feels surreal that they not only competed in the national championship, but they won it too.
“I don’t know if it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime things that we got to do,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get it again, maybe we never will. I don’t know, but it’s really cool.”
As Kevin and Snyder geared up for their Mountaineers practice on Tuesday, they said the Chargers season might be over, but the rugby season is just getting started.
“We’re focused on the Can-Am Rugby Tournament now,” Kevin said, with a smile.
To watch a recording of the game, visit tinyurl.com/4ccs3th5.