kodiak

Stanford Ten’s Tournament

Wow, long day …

I woke up at around 6 this morning and headed up to Stanford for the Ten’s Rugby Tournament. Earlier in the week I had gotten a note on the Mission Rugby mailing list that San Jose State would likely be short on players and could use a hand. The news that we needed to be there around 7am showed up a little later, and from what I saw the rest of the day- really put off people.

So there I was, 7 am at Stanford, standing in the dark and in the cold looking for a rugby team that I had never played with, and wondering just what was in store for the rest of the day. Luckily I found the SJSU team and Mission players slowly started to drift in. Our first match kicked off at 7:42 AM and through out the day I played 4 matches, starting for the SJSU A side at lock/break in the last 3 matches. I wish I could say that we walked away with the tournament trophy, but that was far from the case. SJSU is a young team, they lack discipline and well… heart. Not all, but many. Still it was fun to play. As it always is with rugby- teams are happy to have more players.

My right knee eventually let me know that it was not too happy with the tournament style of play– 20 minutes on, 2 hours off. Usually you do the damage in a nice contiguous 90 minute game and then drink the bumps and bruises off immediately following. We did not have that luxury today.