Eastern’s women’s rugby is looking to

improve to 5-0 for the third time in the last four years.

Eastern will travel to Milwaukee, to

at 1 p.m. Saturday to take on the University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Panthers are coming off of their

first road win of the season and are gaining momentum as they reach

the halfway point of the season.

The Panthers are coming off of their

best performance of the season, and will look to build on that this

weekend. Eastern’s offensive attack broke out of their scoring funk

last weekend as they beat up on their in-state rival, Illinois

Champaign-Urbana.

“Our set pieces and attacking plays

were all very good,” Head Coach Frank Graziano said. “As far as our

progress goes, I am very pleased to put up a big number.”

The Panthers dominated the Illini on

their way to the 91-7 win.

Eastern will continue their road trip

this weekend against Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Eastern has had success in recent

years against Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the team said it is

confident that trend will continue this weekend.

“I’m all kinds of excited,” junior

wing Kayla Heal said. “We don’t like them very much. They are one

of our rivals and they are one of the better rugby teams. If we can

get a shutout against them then that would be great.”

Eastern and Wisconsin-Milwaukee have

met on the rugby pitch two times since 2009, and Eastern has came

out on top in each of the contests.

Eastern beat Wisconsin-Milwaukee 45-0

in last years match-up, but the two teams played down to the final

whistle in 2009 as Eastern won a 29-27 nail-biter.

“I’d like to think that we can push

the bar up a little bit,” Graziano said. “We had a good game

against Illinois and if we have good practices this week then

hopefully we will play better.”

“Milwaukee is a more difficult team to

play than Illinois is, and they will test us offensively,” Graziano

said. “If we can improve than hopefully we can put up a good result

and feel better about where we are at this season.”

Kick off for the Panthers is slated

for 1 p.m. this Saturday. 

Jordan Pottoff can be reached at

581-7942 or jbpottorff@eiu.edu.