UWRFC Alumni Newsletter - Winter 2010

President's Letter 

It brings me great joy to introduce to you the first UWRFC Alumni newsletter. This occasion demonstrates just how far we have come in such a short time. The credit goes out to many people, namely my fellow committee members who have volunteered countless hours behind the scenes to make this happen. It has been a true labor of love for all of us to invest our time back into a program that has given us undeniable friendship, discipline, and a chance to compete as student athletes.

As we all know, collegiate rugby programs need the backing of a strong alumni network to compete year after year at the highest level. It is no coincidence that the same teams perennially compete for the Collegiate National Championship. They have access to better equipment, better facilities, better recruits and more clout with their respective universities. This is Washington's answer to that call.

It's hard to imagine that this is UW Rugby's 47th year of existence. One can look at this and say so much road to tread and so much lost time...why now? But I am inspired by the stories of players such as brothers Emil ('70) and Peter ('74) Giese who talk with passion about playing during the dawn of UW rugby. And the affection shared between generations of UW Rugby families such as father and sons, Malcom McPhee Sr. and Jr. ('84, '05), Mark and Nate Olsen ('84, '08), and Alan, Jonathan and Jeff Blackstock ('76, '10, '12). It is stories and players like these that motivated us to create this association. UW Rugby has a story to tell, and it's time to tell it.

Over the last three and a half months, your committee has been hard at work. We have doubled our alumni base, forged relationships with the University Alumni Association to find lost players and have established long term needs for active players. As we continue to identify our ongoing role with the team, university and recreation department, we still need your help. We are in contact with just roughly 15% of our total alumni base. We need players from the 60's, 70's, and 80's to tell us who you played with. We also need everyone to verify their contact information here. This link will also allow you to add teammate suggestions to the list.

I cannot end however without also giving our current coaching staff, who graciously volunteer their weeknights and weekends to make UW Rugby a better program and the memory of a lifetime for students.

We hope you enjoy the first edition of our newsletter.

Sincerely,
Todd Harry ('97-'02)
UWRFC Alumni President

Coaches Corner

I am excited to update the Alumni community on how the club is developing this year. We have been making some great headway. First, I would like to introduce the coaching staff for the University of Washington Husky Men's Rugby Team: Shawn Loudenback, Head Coach; Joe Rissone; Forwards Coach, Matt Kuzma, Backs Coach; Steve Bush, Backrow Coach; Boydie Wikeepia, Asst. Backs Coach; Colin Shaw, Asst. Backs Coach, Seconds; Ken Pitchford, Asst Forwards Coach, Seconds; Kelly Milligan, Asst. Backrow Coach, and Manager.

We have been blessed this season to have the above mentioned coaches as part of the team, and we have had a VERY good year recruiting! We currently have over 55 registered players with a median age of 19, including many new freshman and sophomore athletes. It has been a work in progress but the hard work and dedication of our young players is paying off. Or goal is to keep the ratio of coaches to players at 1:5.

Without a doubt, we are looking to win the league this half of the season. Our first half record of .500 in league play does not necessarily represent the level of our ability. We have upped our work rates, focusing on our fitness levels and workout routines. With the help of inside center, Paul Zavagalia, who doubles as a Cross Fit Instructor, we've created position specific workouts for all players. The results have been outstanding as the pace at training has doubled in as many weeks. The key is to keep the level of intensity at training as high as possible throughout the season.

My philosophy for the continued success of the program is the following three criteria: 1) Having quality players and recruiting, 2) Maintaining a quality coaching staff, and 3) Building relationships with the University. If you're doing all three of these things well, your program is going to thrive. I'm happy to report that our relationship with the school is greatly improved as we have world class training facilities (we train on the Husky Football practice fields), our coaching staff is one of the best in the region, and this year's recruiting efforts have paid off with some tremendous athletes. As many of you know, "athletes attract athletes" and we keep seeing talent show up as our presence on campus continues to increase.

This half, look for our strength to be in the forwards. Our pack is very dynamic in the set pieces and very mobile. Last half's statistics reflect this, as we stole 50% of set piece ball from everyone we played. Forwards to watch include Nick Browning (lock), Phil Hunsiker (#8), Ryan Youngman (hooker), and Dan Kanczugpwski (prop), current DT for the Husky Football team.

We've also worked hard to make focused improvements in our back line for this spring. With converted Flanker/Center Devon Benedict manning Scrumhalf, we add a level of physicality that we can use to exploit other teams, especially in backrow plays. Returning Centers Paul Zavagalia and Spencer Hodapp will anchor the backline.

Our game philosophy is unique in that we look at 10 min. quarters, changing our pattern of play every 10 min. winning or losing so we play OUR game and not there's. As you're watching, look for the change and the effect that it as on both US and the other team.

Coming into the spring season, we sit behind CWU and OSU in the standings. We host very important home matches with playoff implications vs. OSU on Feb 13, and against WSU on Feb. 20. We encourage you to attend.

Special Events: Forwards Clinic - January 23
At publication of this newsletter, the UWRFC will have hosted a clinic on scrums and lineouts for over 150 Northwest ruggers. Special coaches included Luke Gross and Bill LeClerc, the lineout and scrum coaches (respectively) for the US Eagles. Both coaches also held a private session with the Husky team that Thursday night. We fully intend to develop this into a series of camps to raise money for the club and to support Northwest rugby.

Southwest Tour: Mar. 25-29
UWRFC will be touring to the University of Arizona to take on the Wildcats in non-league, Pac 10 play, in a game filmed and broadcast on ESPN-U. We will also be making a stop at Arizona State University during our tour to give the term "friendly game" a new definition. We are treating both games as tournament preparation with sites on making it to playoffs in the following weeks.

Let's have a great season-

Shawn Loudenback
Head Coach, UWRFC
206.999.9991

Alumni Spotlight

Chris Majer (1969-1973)

When Todd and the crew asked me to write the initial Alumni Spotlight, I said 'sure'. I write all the time, papers, letters and even a book, so this would be no big deal, right? Wrong. I stared at the screen for a long time wondering what I could say that would speak to a few generations of Husky alumns. I'm not sure I have the right answer but I think I'll start with a reflection on my own experiences as a Husky.

I grew up in Spokane and landed at the U in the fall of 1969. I was a marginal high school football player and Jim Owens didn't have much use for me. The crew team took a run at me but the notion of getting up at 5:00 am, getting a buzz cut, and rowing around in the dark wasn't all that appealing. I was an SAE and one of my frat brother was a Rugby player. Until that point I had never heard of the sport, and all fall I resisted his attempts to get me out to practice.

In the spring of 1970, the world that we knew exploded and the campus became a focal point for the anti-war movement. like many others I found myself compelled to speak out, and did so with enough credibility that although only 19, I became the voice of the radio free Seattle as we took over KUOW and ran the radio station for six weeks. As a poli-sci major, we had a once in a lifetime opportunity to study and observe politics at work. It was a very different world.

In the midst of this, I decided to give Rugby a go and all of you know the experience of "finally, a sport and mindset that fits." In those days our coaches were grad students from the UK who coached during the week and played on Saturdays. Like all of you, I fell in love with the game and found myself leaving marches and turning over the microphone early to be sure I made practice.

I remember quite clearly my first game as we traveled to BC to play a Vancouver club side. As a B team player, we played their 'old boys' team. I remember being amazed that guys over 30 could still run and hoping that I lived that long. Early in the game, I was running across the field and one of the old boys looked over at me and smiled. "First game?" he asked. "Yah," I responded. With that, he tripped me, gave me a shove and said, "Welcome to Canada." How can you not love that!

Over the years we built a solid club side and by the time I was a junior, we were dominating what was then a regional collegiate league. Well, to be more precise, we dominated the U.S. colleges - WSU, Oregon, Oregon State, Western, and Central. We didn't fare so well against UBC and UVIC, both of whom were in our league.

In those days, when you graduated from the U, you could play for the Seattle RFC or nothing. That was it. Seattle then was a club that we viewed as second tier, they weren't committed to winning and thus were a growing frustration at the U. In addition, we had a new problem in that many of our first team players had graduated and weren't technically students any more. As there was no place else to play, they stayed with the club, but clearly this wasn't going to work for long.

Thus was born Old Puget Sound Beach. A new club was formed almost exclusively of UW alumns that wanted to keep playing at the highest level. The history of Beach is another story, but in the early days, for those who wanted to play top tier Rugby, the path was clear. You learned at the U and went on to play for Beach. I played my four years at UW and another 8 with the Beach side. Like many of you, I spent my 20's supporting my Rugby playing habit while my peers were building careers and families.

Over the years we have all lamented the lack of a strong club structure in the US and done what we could to support the sport until it was time to 'grow up.' Now we find ourselves confronted with the simple question, "Why should I care about this and devote any time or treasure to an institution that I am long gone from?" I won't pretend to answer that question for the rest of you, but here is why I think it's important:

When I was playing, I was interested in graduating on time, being part of the club, drinking beer, and learning the game. What I didn't see until much later was that I learned a lot more than the game from my years playing Rugby. I learned what it was to be part of a team. For too many people, that is an empty cliche, but if you played for the Huskies, you learned this lesson. It wasn't always pretty but it was important in shaping you into a man and enabling you to take you place in the world.

I learned what it was to make and keep a commitment. No one makes you go to Rugby practice, no one gives you a scholarship. You do it because you love the game, because you are part of the team, and in the end--because you made the commitment to do it. No one liked to go to practice in the rain but you did. No one liked to go to practice when you were hurt, didn't feel like it, or had a date, but you did. You did because you came to see that keeping your commitments was more important than indulging your whims of the moment (at least most of the time) and in so doing, you learned an important life lesson that many miss.

What else? I learned to play hurt, to keep going when every atom in my body said, 'no more'. This is a lesson that has served me well in my professional life. I learned what it took to be a winner and how to deal with defeat. We weren't always graceful in defeat, but I can frankly say that I don't remember our ever losing twice in a row. These are all life lessons that you can't pay for--you can only experience them on your own, and once you do, it is incumbent on you to return the favor. This is how you thank and honor those that came before you and enabled your experience; you insure that the next generation has the same opportunities. That is what we are about here gentlemen. It is time to attend to our collective legacy.

Over the years the game has changed, the nature of the competition has changed, and the requirements for a top tier program have changed. Cal, BYU, and the service academies have dominated for years. Stanford has its own Rugby stadium and we have been slow to mobilize. We now have enough Husky Rugby Alumni to coordinate an effort to bring the program to the elite level, and it isn't going to happen if everyone waits for 'them' to do it. We have been waiting for 'them' for the better part of 40 years, and that hasn't been working out, so now is the time for a new approach.

Over the next year, what you can expect is a structure to evolve, a set of goals to be developed and a then series of requests will be coming your way. In the beginning, they will be simple--help us find missing Huskies. As things get better organized, you will get requests for your most precious assets, time and treasure. We will want to build an endowment fund to pay for coaches, equipment, and all of the things that it takes to support a top tier program, one that you can all be proud you had a hand in shaping and one in which you can take pride in knowing that players out on the field wearing purple and gold are standing on your shoulders.

Chris Majer played at the U from 1969-73 and was a co-captain of the team his senior year. He is now the CEO of the Human Potential Project, a company that works with Fortune 500 companies to develop leadership and management competence. He has written 20 white pages and is the author of The Power to Transform.
 

Announcements

Stay tuned for next year's Alumni Weekend in September - October 2010! 

We will be organizing several social events, another rugby match, and another round of officer elections. We look forward to seeing you all there.

More details soon to come.

Please take some time to verify your contact information and let us know if there are any other former UW ruggers that we are missing from our list HERE.