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As I sit here and eat my bagel on this fine Monday morning, I was giving serious thought to sitting this post out, like some of the other bums who write on Synerjack. But, alas, writing has gotten the best of me. So, please don’t worry, I’m not going to talk much about drinking exploits or NASCAR (although I will spend some time talking about the greatest of all sports… rugby). Now, for one of the greatest road-trips of all time… involving me, a stop at the Lubbock County Jail, and 20-something other collegiate ruggers on their way to Nacogdoches, TX to take on the Lumberjacks of Stephen F. Austin University. It was my sophomore year at Texas Tech, and the fall was absolutely beautiful. The leaves were turning colors, cool weather had really set in, all of my first round exams had come to pass, and our rugby team was something like 6-1 (the sole loss coming from the Dallas Harlequins, if I remember right). Our pack (the eight guys who hunker down into what’s known as a “scrum”) was the best that Tech had ever seen (and probably ever will see). We only had a couple of new guys on the team, so the majority of us were all holdovers from ‘01-’02, meaning that we had had the previous entire year to really gel as a team. We knew each other pretty well, both on and off the paddock. At least, that’s what we thought as we met up for the roadtrip to SFA.
As we all loaded up our gear and overnight bags, we noticed that one of our starting wings wasn’t there. We all began trying to call Atwell, but to no avail. Then, someone had a realization: evidently, the previous night, Atwell had gotten a little joyous and wound up in the county lock-up. Now that the mystery had been solved, we all piled into the vans and made our way to the jail, where we picked up our winger and proceeded to hit the road.
Several of the non-starters on the team had a habit of imbibing in beverages before the actual game, since they weren’t going to see much, if any, playing time. Some of these guys proceeded to imbibe for the entire ride from Lubbock to the Metroplex, where we had to stop to relieve ourselves and pick up food at Jack in the Box in Weatherford. It was here where some of the shenanigans really began: One of the non-starters, being quite joyful, decided that he wanted his picture taken on El Burro, our team mascot (a black and white striped garden statue of a donkey). In the drive-through, this particular guy got his picture taken atop El Burro, to the chagrin of the Jack in the Box manager, as well as some 10 cars that were waiting in line behind the donkey and his drunken buddy.
As we passed through Ft. Worth, we picked up some tailgaters (a couple of co-eds from TCU in a Honda). These future elementary teachers (isn’t that why people go to TCU?) began playing a game with us as we drove through Metroplex nightime traffic: attempting to flirt at 70mph. Again, an antic from a non-starter… having to go to the bathroom, he crouched in the van and proceeded to relieve himself in the closest Gatorade bottle he could find. At this, the co-eds were laughing, directly behind us. The laughing stopped, however, when the bottle made its way out the van’s side window, bounced once, and exploded across their Honda’s windshield.
As we made our way on, we did battle with East Texas drivers near Tyler, TX. If you’ve ever driven in East Texas, you know exactly what I’m talking about, since they are all pretending it’s Daytona and they’re in Jeff Gordon’s driver’s seat. People actually tried to “race” us, in our 15-passenger vans, as we made our way along I20.
After finally arriving in Nacogdoches, we got four hours of sleep before waking up to make it to the field, stretch and warm up before giving the Lumberjacks a good shellacking on their home field. A few of us piled back into one of the vans and made our way home, which I was out for the majority of that trek; but the remaining group of Texas Tech ruggers had their own adventures in Nacogdoches, even without those of us who went home.
Although there was plenty that was hard about playing for Tech, there are times when I really do miss playing the sport of rugby. There were some really fun roadtrips (getting pulled over outside of Water Valley for doing 70mph in a 65 zone as I tried to get two of my buddies with a bit of a stomach bug to the next Alsup’s), and some really hard times (try carrying a 225lb. man on your back up and down the United Spirit Arena’s steps over and over and over), but it grew me as an individual and let me have an outlet for aggression. In the end, though, even more than the sport, I will always have memories of good times (as well as bad ones) with guys who were in the same strange place in life that I was: Where am I going? What am I doing here? Who am I? Why am I majoring in this? Just one roadtrip on the highway to becoming a man…
For your information: “Rugby, Racing and Beer” is actually a song from New Zealand, talking about their three primary loves - the sport of rugby (go All Blacks!), yacht racing, and, yes, beer.
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I think the guys at yahoo or cbssportline or ESPN should come up with fantasy rugby. It won’t replace the blood and sweat, but you could raise up a whole new generation of geeks who really know what a hooker is.