Farewell to Spring Rugby

Well the spring season is finally over! A season that started in December for me as I quickly learned that my role as Match Secretary would NEVER be as fun at I hoped. I had to have the newly formatted West D1 League Match Schedule in by January 1st. ARGH! So the frantic emailing began between Austin, KC, St. Louis, and the Colorado teams.

After literally hundreds of emails from each team the schedule was set and I hadn’t even started practice yet! It was a relief to have the schedule set in stone, but realizing how much our travel plans were going to have to change was disheartening. We realized that we were flying to almost five venues a year instead of two now. Fundraising was suddenly the focus of our team…then we realized that nine of our starting veterans were retiring.

The panic definitely started setting in at that point. What were we going to do? We needed more money than ever before and we needed to find replacement players FAST!

We started the season with 26 on the roster…and that quickly dwindled to about 22 as players got new jobs, were deployed or were injured. Luckily our recruiting officer had done a good job and we had picked up seven rookies…we were adamant on teaching them rugby as fast as we could. I’m surprised they stuck around…we pretty much tortured them and demanded the fastest learning possible!

The season was definitely a struggle with highs and lows on the field and off the field. We were developing a new game plan that was truly a fifteen player game or nothing. Fitness became our number one priority because we all knew that we might not have a sub. We asked our players to push themselves farther than they had ever been before. We had props that had never played more than 20 minutes that were suddenly being challenged to play an entire 80 minutes of high level rugby. We had wings that were literally taped so tight that they could barely walk…but they knew they had to play through the pain. The heart of this team is tremendous, but the reality is that we suffered.

But isn’t this what the spirit or rugby is about? Every week we had consistent numbers at practice, smiling faces and we all did exactly what our coaches asked us to do. We hit each other over and over to make sure our tackling was perfect. We challenged each other’s weaknesses and helped each other find the gaps…so we could all run to glory. The drills were never-ending and touch was always an interesting escape…but we made it.

As I look forward to the summer and this break from rugby (ha…a break? I’m playing West 15s and West 7s all summer…), I am excited about the fall. We already have plans for fundraising, recruiting and will be ushering in a new team this fall.

Good luck with your summer and the upcoming fall!

*And good luck to Burns as she moves onto bigger and greater things in DC.

*Good luck with the baby-makin’ Rock…