Houston Tournament – Oct 13, 2007

Houston Tournament – Oct 13, 2007

Sorry this post is so late…been really crazy with work, rugby and school. But the good news is, I finished my math class (got an A!) and have finished out the semester. Overall the grades were MUCH higher than they usually are, so I am quite proud of myself. Only three (maybe four) semesters to go and I will have finally finished my Bachelor’s degree. Considering I have hated school since I started it, this will be a big accomplishment in my life!

Anyways, so rugby…wow rugby, you consume my life, ruin my life, elevate my life…what to do with this love hate relationship? Maybe I will write more about that topic later!

So the majority of the Valkyries arrived in Houston Friday night and stayed at our teammate’s parents house. The house was rather large and was decorated with many many elephants. Jake my dog, came with us and he had never experienced wooden stairs, so the first run up was pretty hilarious for those of us downstairs. He was slippin‘ and slidin‘ everywhere and almost fell a couple of times. He is still such a puppy, all gangly and silly. But I love him so much…I don’t care if his legs are three times longer than his body!

So we slept pretty good as most people had a bed, couch or air mattress. This team is so smart, they invested in 5 air mattresses for the team, so we never are without comfort! The next morning we awoke and headed down into downtown Houston for the tournament. We knew this weekend was going to be a different weekend as were going to play all our Bside players and do what if situations. What if the starting flyhalf, scrumhalf etc goes down? So we were mentally prepared to maybe play out of position or to be on the sidelines for a half.

The first game was against the University of Texas at 9:45am. We played well as we outmatched them even with a few players out of position and a few of the more experienced girls on the sideline. We worked hard to try and remember that yes, we can run around them, but why not work on our game plan and work on the fundamentals? UT played very well though and were hard hitting in the scrum and the rucks. I believe this was the game where we took out the starting flyhalf and moved someone in to get some time there…always good to be prepared!

The second game of the day was against Texas State University…we won by several tries but again tried to focus on not running around people but active support with good decision making. In this game I believe we had the starting scrumhalf sit one half and then had some players moved around where they might not usually play. It is good to see the versatility of most players as they can be a forward, back, center, wing, hooker etc. Love those utility players!

Then we had a pretty long break for lunch and until our next game. A few of the Valks played for other teams as most of the teams only had a few subs. A few Valks and myself played in the SHSU vs TX State because HARC had loaned a few players and TX State was getting stomped all over. It was fun to play with a different team and I even played fullback for a few minutes. I never liked that position, I like to be close in to the action, hence being a scrumhalf! LOL.

* The picture is of the Valks that stayed after the tournament to get our 2nd place prize. Houston had taken a team picture earlier in the day and then blown them up and framed them. Great tournament prizes!

For the final we played A&M and the game was very evenly matched again. We stuck to our guns again all day and played the Bside girls again. Both teams played very well but A&M won with a buzzer try with no time to spare. Great game girls.

Good weekend in all, look forward to a similar tournament in Austin in the Spring…