BERKELEY – California rugby will contest a national title match this Saturday when the team faces Navy in the D1A National Collegiate Championships. The match will kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT / 4:30 p.m. PT at Aveva Stadium in Houston.
 
The championship match headlines a busy weekend of rugby at Aveva Stadium with the Collegiate Premier 7s tournament also set to take place throughout Saturday and Sunday. Fans joining the Golden Bears in person can purchase an all-day ticket for Saturday to watch the title match. The match will also be streamed live on The Rugby Network.
 
Cal (12-3) has strung together a solid postseason thus far, rolling past Cal Poly 82-15 in the first round of the playoffs before edging Saint Mary's 29-28 in the national quarterfinals. Last time out, the Bears routed Brigham Young 55-31 in the semifinals to earn their spot in the finals.
 
Navy remains undefeated this season, most recently coming off a 12-10 victory over Lindenwood in the national semifinals to earn its trip to the finals. Cal and Navy last met in Annapolis, Maryland on March 11 for a regular-season contest in which Navy defeated Cal 33-28.
 
The two programs are no strangers in postseason matchups, having met 14 times in elimination rounds since the beginning of the national collegiate championships in 1980. Nearly 30 years ago, Cal and Navy met in the 1994 finals in Washington D.C., the Mids' only other appearance in a championship game in program history. The Bears won the match 27-13 to bring the title back to Berkeley.  
 
For the first time since Feb. 11, both senior co-captains Max Schumacher and Nathan Zylstra will feature in the starting lineup this weekend. Zylstra, who was ruled out due to injury for nearly two months, made his triumphant return to the game as a reserve-replacement hooker against BYU in the semifinals.
 
In Zylstra's absence, Schumacher has led the Bears well this season and also picked up some personal accolades. He was named a Rudy Scholz Award finalist on April 19 and on Monday he was honored with the Jake Gimbel Award at Cal's annual academic honors luncheon. The senior is also the Bears' leading points-scorer this season with a whopping 130 points tallied between tries, conversions and penalty kicks.
 
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