Return to rugby
This LJ entry is long overdue, but I've been as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
This entry is a little long. Feel free to read it here:
The weekend of October 7th was the annual Flagstaff 10's tournament which traditionally signals the beginning of our pre-season training. Instead of the usual 15-player rugby, it's 10 players with a much smaller sized field. Instead of 40-minute halves, we're playing 15-minute halves. Oh, and we are playing at 7,000 feet altitude, and most of us are playing without having kept up our fitness through the off-season. It is quite the challenge especially for yours truly who hasn't really performed any sort of strenuous activity since the blow-out fracture of the orbital back at the end of February.
It was absolutely beautiful up on Flagstaff. It almost always is at this time of the year. For those of you who have not been there, you're up in the mountains and pine tree forests. The deciduous trees are already turning red, yellow, orange and gold. During the day it is in the upper 70's and at night it's around 50. Perfect rugby weather.
Our first match was at 11:30 a.m. playing against the aeronautical school Emery-Riddle Black Sheep. I got to start the first half and played alright, but probably ten minutes through the match, I was winded! The altitude always catches me by surprise. I feel fine one moment and the next I feel like I've run a marathon! They were leading by a try as the half. I could tell that we weren't totally in sync just yet. I took myself out at half-time to rest. I'll have at least two other matches to play later anyway. We finally ended up winning by something like 3 points.
Our second match was at 3 p.m. I always hate it when we have that much lag time in between matches. On the flip side, I had a chance to just soak in the beautiful day laying in the grass, enjoying the fresh air, the warm sun, munching on protein bars, and watching rugby. Now, if only I had a beer. (couldn't have beer on the field as we were using school grounds for the tournament). We played one of our division rivals, the Red Mountain Warthogs from Mesa, AZ. They didn't put me in till the last ten minutes of the game, but it was fun. We lost this match.
In our third match, we played the Cave Creek Critters. I think because they weren't that good of a team last year a lot of us thought we'd steamroll them. Boy were we wrong, and we started to rally towards the end, but it was too little, too late. We lost by three points. I played through the whole game. I thought everyone and their mother had me in their sights because they were all running at me when they had the ball thinking that they could run over lil old me.
They were wrong. All of them. I didn't miss a single tackle and brought them all down. I even chased one big guy about fifteen meters and brought him down from behind. Of course I took some crazy hits myself. It's not my fault, the balls just kept coming my way here! One ball went high, and the guy had an open shot at my ribs. Thankfully, it only knocked the wind out of me which took me about a minute to recover from. I made one mistake where I ended up knocking the ball forward. I had picked up the ball and started to run upfield when I got blindsided by a defender tackling me causing me to try to give the ball to my own team. Unfortunately the tackler had spun me around and I was rolling the ball the wrong way and got penalized for it. The only blemish to an otherwise great performance.
So, we ended up being 1-3; therefore, we didn't make the finals the next day. I did stick around anyway just to watch the finalists compete. NAU had three guys come out that next morning and play the Star Spangled Banner. One had a tuba, another had a trumpet, and the third had cymbals. They all wore stars and stripes luchadores (sp?) masks. It was quite comical, but they did a very good job with the national anthem. By 1 in the afternoon, the matches were done and the tournament finished. I hopped into my car and enjoyed a beautiful drive back down to Phoenix with my windows open. Except for the occasional stench of a dead skunk, the air smelled wonderful and the sun was in my face. A beautiful way to end a great weekend.
This entry is a little long. Feel free to read it here:
The weekend of October 7th was the annual Flagstaff 10's tournament which traditionally signals the beginning of our pre-season training. Instead of the usual 15-player rugby, it's 10 players with a much smaller sized field. Instead of 40-minute halves, we're playing 15-minute halves. Oh, and we are playing at 7,000 feet altitude, and most of us are playing without having kept up our fitness through the off-season. It is quite the challenge especially for yours truly who hasn't really performed any sort of strenuous activity since the blow-out fracture of the orbital back at the end of February.
It was absolutely beautiful up on Flagstaff. It almost always is at this time of the year. For those of you who have not been there, you're up in the mountains and pine tree forests. The deciduous trees are already turning red, yellow, orange and gold. During the day it is in the upper 70's and at night it's around 50. Perfect rugby weather.
Our first match was at 11:30 a.m. playing against the aeronautical school Emery-Riddle Black Sheep. I got to start the first half and played alright, but probably ten minutes through the match, I was winded! The altitude always catches me by surprise. I feel fine one moment and the next I feel like I've run a marathon! They were leading by a try as the half. I could tell that we weren't totally in sync just yet. I took myself out at half-time to rest. I'll have at least two other matches to play later anyway. We finally ended up winning by something like 3 points.
Our second match was at 3 p.m. I always hate it when we have that much lag time in between matches. On the flip side, I had a chance to just soak in the beautiful day laying in the grass, enjoying the fresh air, the warm sun, munching on protein bars, and watching rugby. Now, if only I had a beer. (couldn't have beer on the field as we were using school grounds for the tournament). We played one of our division rivals, the Red Mountain Warthogs from Mesa, AZ. They didn't put me in till the last ten minutes of the game, but it was fun. We lost this match.
In our third match, we played the Cave Creek Critters. I think because they weren't that good of a team last year a lot of us thought we'd steamroll them. Boy were we wrong, and we started to rally towards the end, but it was too little, too late. We lost by three points. I played through the whole game. I thought everyone and their mother had me in their sights because they were all running at me when they had the ball thinking that they could run over lil old me.
They were wrong. All of them. I didn't miss a single tackle and brought them all down. I even chased one big guy about fifteen meters and brought him down from behind. Of course I took some crazy hits myself. It's not my fault, the balls just kept coming my way here! One ball went high, and the guy had an open shot at my ribs. Thankfully, it only knocked the wind out of me which took me about a minute to recover from. I made one mistake where I ended up knocking the ball forward. I had picked up the ball and started to run upfield when I got blindsided by a defender tackling me causing me to try to give the ball to my own team. Unfortunately the tackler had spun me around and I was rolling the ball the wrong way and got penalized for it. The only blemish to an otherwise great performance.
So, we ended up being 1-3; therefore, we didn't make the finals the next day. I did stick around anyway just to watch the finalists compete. NAU had three guys come out that next morning and play the Star Spangled Banner. One had a tuba, another had a trumpet, and the third had cymbals. They all wore stars and stripes luchadores (sp?) masks. It was quite comical, but they did a very good job with the national anthem. By 1 in the afternoon, the matches were done and the tournament finished. I hopped into my car and enjoyed a beautiful drive back down to Phoenix with my windows open. Except for the occasional stench of a dead skunk, the air smelled wonderful and the sun was in my face. A beautiful way to end a great weekend.