Sam Pankey – USA Rugby Eagle, Vertical Test & Tigertown History

Re-posted with permission from On The Rugby Sidelines:

“No beep test this morning!” You can imagine how suspiciously excited we were upon hearing this. However, breaking news that the beep test would be tomorrow morning quickly routed the evanescent excitement.

Actually, none of us had any hope of the beep test disappearing from our itinerary, and really none of us were scared or too worried about it. The fact that it’s an assessment has awoken the competitive part of our brain, and we are all just anxious to get it done and get our results.

We did do a vertical test (thank you, years of basketball, you surely did pay off once again) and a 70m shuttle test (6 70m shuttles in 3 minutes), which will be used to assess our fatigue level/recovery rate/all that technical jazz. We also played rugby…well, not an actual game, but rugby with no set positions, less numbers, no scrums or lineouts and an abbreviated field. We’ll get to play tomorrow as well and again on Saturday. That makes all of the fitness assessments worthwhile.

The 7’s ladies and the collegiate all-Americans did some fitness of their own—the Death Flop. If you’re unfamiliar with the Death Flop, I’ll sum it up with this: sprints, flopping onto the ground, rolling and more sprints…nearly throwing up, lactate buildup and lightheadedness.

Speaking of the 7’s ladies, some of them are moving to San Diego, in the very near future, to begin new careers as professional athletes. I’ve had a chance to chat with a couple of the pros, and they are very excited at having this opportunity. I’m excited for them and for the game of rugby. Hopefully, with the efforts of our great coaching staffs and our dedicated players, the sport will gain some popularity here in the States and more of the women who have, for years, paid (both monetarily and physically) for their chance to represent their country in international competition will get rewarded for their efforts.

That’s all the rugby talk I have in me for the night. On a bit of an unrelated note, Tigertown FL was not, in fact, founded by rogue Detroit Tigers (as I mentioned in my earlier blog). I must have gotten confused with all of the Detroit memorabilia around here (I’m still not certain as to whether or not Cecil Fielder was the mayor at one time).

Actually, in the late 18th century, the import of exotic animals by American aristocracy was on the rise. A New Orleans gentleman, Mr. Dwayne Devereaux, had shipped to his home in the French Quarter a litter of tiger cubs from the Royal Essex Exotic Animal Company, in 1797. Six of the seven cubs survived the trip, and Mr Devereaux was a kind and loving pet owner to the survivors. However, Nature has the habit of rearing its head in the untamed. The tigers, Sissy, Missy, Muffy, Buffy and Carl, escaped from Mr. Devereaux’s home, after destroying his collection of stuffed wild game, and migrated along the Gulf of Mexico on into Florida.

Carl proved to be very virile, and Sissy, Missy, Muffy and Buffy proved to be very fertile. When settlers arrived a few years later, they found the forests of what is now Lakeland, teeming with tigers. Of course, tiger maulings soon became very unpopular among the settlers and so they immediately began a tiger-eradication process, but not before dubbing the little hamlet Tigertown.