Scottsdale Stadium hosted a sport other than baseball on April 18.
The 2nd annual Mercedes-Benz of Scottsdale: Beauty and the Beast Rugby Bowl featured three rugby games inside of the San Francisco Giants’ Spring Training facility.
Around 2,000 fans turned out to watch the matches.
The division one high school championship started the series of games off. Red Mountain held a consistent lead over Scottsdale through the course of the game.
Red Mountain was the defending champion heading into the game. Following a 47-19 win, Red Mountain held on to their title.
Moving into the collegiate games, Grand Canyon played University of Southern California following the high school match.
Grand Canyon is in their inaugural season, but their playing tactics said otherwise. The Lopes got on the board early with a score from freshman Darien Pickett. At the half, Grand Canyon had a significant lead of 28-3.
Grand Canyon didn’t give USC many chances to score in the second half either and clinched the match over USC 59-8.
To create a change of pace in between games, Phoenix Fashion Week held a Warning Track Fashion Show. Although Phoenix Fashion Week isn’t until October, the group hosts multiple events throughout the year to build energy.
Models showed off attire for both playing and watching the sport. Once the models had finished their walk about the track, they formed tunnels for the players to run out through to get the ASU vs. OSU game started.
The Arizona State and Ohio State matchup was chalked up to be a rematch from the 1997 Rose Bowl in football.
“We look at it as the fact that Ohio State and Arizona State don’t play each other very often,” Arizona State head coach Gary Lane said.
Arizona State currently ranks tenth in the nation. Over the past five years, they have consistently been in the top 15.
The matchup went scoreless for the first ten minutes, but the Sun Devils were the first to get on the board. Once the points started to roll in for ASU, they didn’t stop.
For halftime entertainment, world arm wrestling champion Travis Bagent took on a handful of people.
Challengers included Mike Bauer from Fox Sports 910, Arizona Republic contributor Dan Bickley, Scottsdale Councilman Guy Phillips, and Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Coming back from halftime, Arizona State kept their staggering lead and continued to keep Ohio State at bay.
Arizona State forwards Matt Brennan and Nick Howard created a pummeling offense where they scored over thirty points combined.
ASU went on to shut out OSU 59-0.
Aside from Rugby, fans could check out a variety of vendors on the concourse.
Rugby Bowl founder Jason Rose also hosts a Polo Party in the fall.
“People encouraged us to do a second Polo event, but Rugby is actually a lot more popular,” Rose said.
Rugby is making a come back and will be reintroduced to the summer Olympics in Rio in 2016. The last time Rugby was played in the Olympics was 1924, and the United States took gold that year.
