Athletes Connection - The Better Side of Sports

	The Better Side of Sports
	Sunday February 17, 2008
	Written by Brett Mills

I am back blogging after a football imposed hiatus. I left you as the World Cup was starting and although it is now it is over, with South Africa reigning as the new world champions, a tremendous amount of excitement still remains. Rugby season in Texas has started with a bang and a flourish and the age-grade national teams take the field in Florida this week for the Freedom Cup. The year 2008 is shaping up to be the most exciting year for rugby yet!

(Photo by Mike Nebel)

Despite the excitement in rugby, team sports in general have suffered from bad press in recent months. The negative news includes drug use, cheating, and player arrests for a variety of illegal activities. It appears that America has lost the plot when it comes to the tremendous value of sports. Rather than serving as a tool for building character and preparing young men and women for productive lives, sports has become sordid entertainment. In an attempt to stem this negative trend St. Thomas Rugby embarked on new venture with the Pink Ribbons Project to fight the horrific disease of breast cancer.

So much to talk about and so little time – enjoy the blog and contact me if there is something you are interested in and would like to see discussed.

World Cup

The prognosticators were wrong – actually very wrong… One of the great things about sport is that they usually are! Every one of my pool of experts had New Zealand in the final – they were shocked in the quarterfinals by France 20-18. With the exception of Phil Beck (who had Australia in the final), the rest of the panel had France playing New Zealand. Obviously, the way the pools and seeds worked out the two teams played each other early. France was then defeated by England 14-9 in the semi-final, leaving South Africa and England to play for the final, after the Springboks defeated Argentina.

I was the only member of the panel to select a team for the final and I picked both South Africa and England as my darkhorses. Where I really failed was in my prediction for the US Eagles – I picked them to win two and in the end they were 0-4. Ouch.

The Eagles lost all four matches and statistically scored less points than they had in 2003 (86 points in 2003 to 61 points in 2007). Although they looked good at times (especially against England), they looked overmatched against Tonga, Samoa, and South Africa. Our leading scorer Mike Hercus had only 26 points and our leading try scorer was Takudzwa Ngwenya with only two tries (however, his try against South Africa was a thrilling one and picked as the IRB Try of the Year). However, good things are getting ready to happen for the men’s side and as the infusion of new talent hits the senior level many are predicting a very strong finish in the next world cup.

Rugby for the Cure

The 1st Annual Lady Hager Cup was played on Feb. 2, 2008. The St. Thomas Eagles faced the Westside Wolves in a match in which the proceeds went to benefit breast cancer awareness and research. The match was followed by a charity auction banquet (in conjunction with the announcement of St. Thomas’s All-Decade team) and over $15,000 was raised for the Pink Ribbons Project. The Eagles won this hard fought cup match 32-10.

(Photo by Mike Nebel)

Both teams played in special uniforms for the event with STH donning pink and Westside wearing special jerseys with the name of breast cancer victims embroidered on them. Westside presented their jerseys to the individuals who were named on their shirts at a special presentation at the end of the match. The Eagles auctioned off their jerseys with the proceeds going to Pink Ribbons.

The match included the teams being piped on the field by a bagpiper and the largest audience to date for a high school rugby match with 1,000 in attendance. This game clearly demonstrated that although rugby is about competition, it is also about something more important – community. How exciting to have young high school males working for a cause like Pink Ribbons! The rugby community hopes that these types of events will spur other sports to give back to the community and transcend the game.

The Future of TYRA

Many administrative changes were made to the Texas Youth Rugby Association in the fall, all dealing with the exponential growth of youth rugby in the state. Growth, although exciting, can be painful at times and all involved have been scrambling to deal with the recent changes.

The most important change was the separation of Texas High School rugby into club and school divisions, reflecting the current trend mandated by USA Rugby. The future of high school rugby is in single school organizations, so this is a great first step on the part of TYRA. The new southern school division will include: St. Thomas H.S., Westside H.S., Mt. Carmel H.S., Stoney Point H.S. (Austin), Strake Jesuit H.S., and Stratford H.S. The rapid growth of rugby will no doubt see a number of new schools joining over the next few years.

Growth is good and we encourage anyone in interested in starting a new team to contact me at Brett.mills@sths.org and I will get you into contact with all the people you will need to know. Good luck to all, be happy, and play rugby!

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