After dropping the season opener to the Quinnipiac Bobcats, the Eastern women’s rugby team will host a select group of Wisconsin All-Stars at Lakeside Field at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

The Wisconsin All-Stars are a group of players from 11 different schools in the University of Wisconsin system, and they will be playing together and meeting each other for the first time this week. Eastern coach Frank Graziano said that gives them the advantage.

“They just started school this week, so this is their actual first week of practice,” Graizano said. “We are excited about playing them. We have never lost to them yet, so this should be a good game. If we could stay in it, where all of the sudden the game is close at half-time, the girls will feel really good.”

Senior Shelby Pilch said she expects the Wisconsin All-Stars to come ready to battle, but the biggest challenge will be the Panthers’ own play.

“It is all about grit and determination, and our willingness to improve,” Pilch said. “We have to execute the number of things that coach has taught us.”

Graziano said the Panthers simply need to get better at running the ball and also work on their open-field tackling.

“We didn’t do well controlling the tempo of the game,” Graziano said. “This week in practice we have been working on running the ball a lot. We need to strike a balance.”

Pilch said there are a lot of positives the Panthers can build on from last week, heading into this game with the Wisconsin All-Stars.

“The first five minutes of the game couldn’t have started any better for us,” Pilch said. “If we expand on that from the last game, we will be able to create more opportunities for ourselves.”

The Panthers are looking to play the same type of style as they did against the Bobcats.

“We didn’t quite execute that against Quinnipiac,” Graziano said. “We had the ball in-play too much, and that is why we were out of position. Quinnipiac just ran down the field at will.”

The Panthers did have the advantage last week in line-outs and scrums, and they are hoping to do that again this week. Pilch said the key to winning this game is communication and to simply execute the basics.

After their worst loss in team history last weekend, the Panthers already have put the game behind them and moved on to this week.

“They played their first game, now it’s time to move on into our season and start to get better each week,” Graziano said. “Week two is right in front of us. Let’s go ahead and have a good game against them and give ourselves a chance.”

Bob Reynolds can be reached at 581-2812 or rjreynolds@eiu.edu.