Your Scrumhalf Connection - Women's Rugby Blog

DAY 2
FRIDAY JUNE 15

ITINERARY
TRAVEL:
Fort Stockton to Tempe (661 miles / 12 hours)

EVENTS:
8:00a Bus time
8:00p Arrive Tempe
9:00p Kangaroo Court @ Team Dinner

Day 2 ... according to Meredith "Bags" Bagley

Fort Stockton to Tempe (661 miles)
A truly monumental day of travel: three states, 661 miles, one continental divide and three time zones. Writing this I can barely remember the motel in Fort Stockton where we began our day...was it just this morning or last week? Despite the daunting distance, the intrepid beavers began our day early by checking da' Bus's fluids -- a process that was going smoothly until Krafty nearly started the massive engine while Rocky was standing on top of it!! Cooler heads prevailed, and we hit the road...

Thankfully the scenery was gorgeous, sagebrush plains and rocky mountaintops made our first leg to El Paso downright enjoyable.

Indulging in a lavish lunch -- at Julio's where tank tops are not allowed (except on the artwork, which was clothing optional) -- our delicious meal was capped off by T-Hole's lovely rendition of the Beaver Song to the entire dining room. To check out Rocky's videotape on YouTube CLICK HERE!!

Granted, she was bribed by a promise of free dinner, but Tiff overcame her anxiety, said a little prayer (thanks to the suggested pre-meal prayer card provided by Julio's) and busted out with "Hello El Paso!!"

The afternoon stretched on and on, with da' Bus chewing up miles of asphalt under the scorching sun. Shalay proved to be our resident off-road specialist, guiding the Beavers on an up-and-down roller coaster ride along a frontage road for some 15 miles before finding an on-ramp to the freeway. Dunkin' Donuts, truck stop showers, card games & even some on-bus calisthenics helped pass the time. At one memorable rest stop, flanked by rusty red rocks piled high on all sides, we utilized Meg's paint markers to inscribe the following messages on da' Bus's back windows: "Vegas or Bust," "Beaver Love," and "Honk for Beaver."

As night fell the Beavers grew more excited about progressing towards Vegas and a reunion in Tempe with everyone's favorite Carrabbamigo, Amanda! Luckily Amanda had the night off and could join us for a fashionably late 11pm dinner...

The Beavers were in full party mode, however, revved up after a rousing game of Never Have I Ever* followed by dancing on the bus (props to Shay for driving this whole time), marveling at the genius of New Kids on the Block videos and other treasures saved on Rocky's laptop.

The highlight of the evening, however, had to be our first session of Beaver Court!!! Everyone on tour was bought up on charges (already!), including da Bus and our members in absentia. Judges Bags & Rocky dispensed fair & wise penalties which will no doubt entertain us all the way to Vegas tomorrow. Yo Ho Ho anyone? Grab your Beaver!! And who the hell is Debbie Gibson?

Late night swimming & umbrella hijinks blended into early morning swimming as the Beavers embarked on the final leg of the travel-intensive portion of this trip. Ahead of us are the bright lights of Las Vegas and the promise of Saturday night in Sin City. With five Vegas-Virgins on da Bus, nothing less than epic adventures await us...

*Beaver Tour Rules preclude me from sharing any of the information divulged during this contest: after all, What Goes on Tour Stays on Tour.

And that was Day 2 according to Bags.

NASC Pictures

Traci Schmidtke's Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2140828&l=7b7b8&id=9611795

Drop Kick Photos:
http://dropkickphotos.smugmug.com/2007%20National%20All%20Star%20Championships

National Sports Photos:
http://nationalsportsphotos.com/find-photos.html *site seems to be down...*

Debtuante Ball Photos - Lonestar 7s

Angelia Flick's Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/angelia.fick/2007DebutanteBallDallasTX

West vs. Minnesota Motely 59-5

West U23 vs. Midwest 31-3

Today we decided that the Super 8 has become our home! We sleep, eat, hydrate, party, play pranks on each other and then finish it all off with more sleeping. Our rooms are scattered messes of rugby gear, cleats, mouth guards, shoulder pads...and whatever else we thought we needed for this journey. You have become closer friends with your roommates, closer than you ever thought! Room 119 has survived the arctic weather, a flood at 4am and overusing of febreeze. Its weird to think that after tomorrow we will have to return to the real world...

Today we trained at 11am, we arrived at 10:30am so a few of us could work on kicking, passing and get stretched out. The muscles are pretty sore from three days of training and a hard game yesterday. Luckily we haven't had any serious injuries of any of our players, everyone is pretty tired and bruised up as expected though.

Yesterday's lose was hard to take as we knew that we didn't play our best the first half. We were very lethargic and some miscommunication in the backs meant missed tackles. Those missed tackles were hard to recover and meant they were able to put the ball under the posts. The officiating was very lopsided as well as we had 15 penalties and they only had 1 in the first half. Spectators that had never seen rugby were even quick to point out that the South was given forward pass after forward pass and knock on after knock on. We tried to ignore the officiating and make sure we were disciplined but we were penalized over and over again. The South put up 25 points in the first half and thought they had sealed the deal.

The second half was a different story though...we had worked out our miscommunication problems and had finally woken up. Off some great 8-man picks and quick rucks out to the backs we were finally able to put some points on the board. Once we got some points on the board we knew it was going to be rough to overcome 39 points, but we tried anyways. I made a penalty kick from about 25 meters out and we were on our way. It was 39-10...and we tried to keep to momentum going. Once again the officiating came into play as we had 8 penalties in that half and they were given 2. It is hard for me to believe that they played that perfect of a game.

The final score was 39-20 and we had fought a hard battle. I have never rucked so much in my life and the forwards had never ran so hard and fast! The South was pretty excited at the end of the game as they had just created a huge upset. I was however disappointed as I was getting the ball for a conversion on one of our tries though. I was picking the ball up and one of the girls was saying "Don't worry about that try ladies, the West sucks and has sucked for years..." I couldn't believe it! What nice tact and good sportsmanship. Suffice to say I knocked down the conversion from the corner and quickly spread the word to my teammates. Disappointing really, as I had thought they were a formidable opponent and was giving them the good job speech, but not anymore.

So we have recovered from our hard loss and are moving forward. This afternoon we had plenty of time to entertain ourselves. Some girls hit the Mall of America and some just hung out at the hotel. I hung out and did some work and then took a well deserved nap. I had thought about going to the mall, but was frankly tired of talking about rugby and needed a break. You know how it goes!

Tonight was a good night as we had a great team dinner and the rookies did their skit! See the video below (its bad quality because of the lighting...we tried to put the blinds down...but negative).

We play tomorrow against the Minnesota motley team at 9am. Wish us luck! The U23s play around 2:30 against Mid West.

Sorry all the internet has been down at our hotel, guess they were working on it or something. Here are the scores from yesterdays games:

National All Star Championship - Senior

Mid West vs. Mid-Atlantic 15-10
Northeast vs. Pacific 32-37
West vs. South 20-39
Southern Cal vs. Minnesota 44-0

National All Star Championship - U23

West vs. Southern Cal 0-15
Mid-Atlantic vs. Midwest 26-24
Pacific vs. South 79-3
Northeast vs. U19s 40-0

More on our game and the U23 game later as we are heading off to training in a few minutes.

Satiated Beaver Tour 2007

On the first day of beaver tour my beaver gave to me...
A princess tiara
And a shiny plastic ring!

Day One ... according to Krafty

Our first leg of the Beaver Tour took us through the lovely Hill Country. We loaded up the bus with all of our beaver bags, beaver munchies, and beaver accessories and got on the road in the Austin heat. Most everyone was drenched in sweat by the time we took off, which is probably a sign of things to come. There is plenty of room on the bus--space for about three to lie down, a card table that seats four for card games or any miscellaneous fun, and two coveted seat belt seats for the driver and her buddy.

A highlight for me so far has been watching each beaver take their turn in learning to drive the bus. Rocky definitely deserves a hand for taking on driving during a central Texas storm, though I must say that I was scared for my life when she drove through a giant puddle at 50 miles per hour which then splashed so much water on the right side and front of the bus that we couldn't see. When we emerged like a submarine, Rocky was convinced that was part of the plan and said she had everything under control. Props go to PhB and Shay for driving as well.

We arrived around 9:30 in Fort Stockton, TX and after checking in, proceeded to the truck stop for dinner. Someone at the hotel told us it is was one of the best places in town. No beer after 10pm and I did stare at one of our waitresses for a while when I saw her chain smoking in the restaurant before I realized that most places outside of Austin do not have no-smoking laws. In true Texas and rugby style, pretty much everyone order gut-busting-sized portions that rivaled the plates of any trucker in the place. Wearing our first round of beaver accessories provided by 3rd Degree (each person has a day during which they are in charge of giving us something to wear) which were mini tiaras and some blingin' rings, we got a lot of stares.

Also, anyone reading this will be happy to know that the scientific order of the beaver is neither "ofelius clitorius" nor "the snorkels and your mama" nor "of the semi-wet dam-loving tail-slapping beasts", but "rodentia." Even with all the bling and the extra attention from riding around in a giant beaver bus, it sure is hard in Fort Stockton for a pimp.

Why that picture you ask? Because after our team check-in we headed over to the National Sports Center and watched a little cycling! It was actually pretty exciting as the guys and gals raced around and catapulted each other too!

We actually got down into the "pit" of the velodrome also as I guess anyone can be down there. So we had about 10 West ruggers down in the thick of it cheering our favorite riders on. Our favorite race by far was the "relay" race...or that's what we called it. They were in teams of two and their method of passing the baton or releasing their partner was to grab each other and catapult each other. It is similar to the drifting technique used in Nascar racing. It was pretty awesome and very entertaining to watch.

Anyways, more rugby is needed in this post! Yesterday we had a second training in the afternoon and it was highly productive. We split immediately after our warm-up and worked on unit skills. The forwards were seen scrumming, doing line-outs and being forward-like. The backs were spotted running and running and doing some standing around. They did some plays and some kicking as well.

Haha, sorry I'm a little tired and the specifics of yesterday are already stored back in the brain somewhere. As for today we had training at 11am and we got right down to the nitty gritty. Sara Edwards and I worked on our kicking for about a half hour and then we split into forwards and backs. The backs worked on finessing our plays and really working hard to straighten up...makes the work easier for everyone that way! The forwards worked on their line-outs a bit more and had some live scrummaging going on. We also did some important shadow work and we had a short captain's run at the end. When Mark turned and told me to run it...I was surprised, but ran it without to many blunders! Ha.

After the training we chowed lunch and immediately got in the pool. At first it was just a few of us, but then we had almost the whole team in there. Of course we quickly got bored with marco polo, so we just started jumping in ALL together and seeing how big we could make the waves. Check out the video below for a pretty funny site!



Then we had a captain's meeting where we went over all the plays, possibilities, kick-offs and more. It was good to sit down with everyone and make sure we are somewhat on the same page. We play our first match tomorrow at 10am against the South. We tried to scout out their practice today but they were done before we could watch.

The all important jersey ceremony was right before check-in and I started it off as captain. I love jersey cermonies, they are usually very emotional and motivating. This one was pretty light hearted as we are a pretty light hearted team. We can often be found laughing instead of paying attention. But we get it done when it counts!

Shout-out to my mates on the Beaver Tour! Last heard they were almost to Ft. Stockton!

I left Austin last night and flew through St. Louis and finally arrived in Minneapolis, MN around midnight. I was supposed to get in around ten, but some crazy weather made the flying a little treacherous, so they flew around it. So I met up with a few other players from the team (their flights had been delayed as well) and we headed to our hotel.

We are in the same Super 8 that we stayed in last year for the exhibition matches against USA A and Midwest B. It kind of feels like home as we had our meetings in the indoor pool room and demolished breakfast this morning in the little breakfast room.

Last night was a rough night of sleeping, the first night at a different place is always difficult for me. I laid there going over the plays and visualizing everything and couldn't turn my brain off. I think I finally dozed off around 2:30. Luckily we didn't have training until 11am...so I didn't have to really think.

We had a team meeting at 9am where we discussed a few things. Geoff our forwards coach had some personal issues and couldn't attend after all. So they had replaced him with Mark and Wendy Cook was brought in to help with the backs. I was sad that Geoff was not attending, he is a HUGE guy with a big heart and always positive. I loved being coached by a real live Kiwi! He played for them in the 80's, but the replacement of Wendy Cook was a big attribute as well she is a very experienced player and a great coach.

Anyways, we started training at 11am with our usual skill work and dynamic warm up. Mark got my hopes up when he had me and Edwards switching out at scrumhalf drills...but when we finally split I was put at the flyhalf position. I know scrumhalfs and flyhalfs are supposed to be interchangeable...but I like wearing the #9 and I LOVE being with the pack. I had come up here knowing that I may be playing flyhalf, but still was hoping I would be in my comfort zone.

We have a few players that are playing out of position and that has been interesting to watch develop. I am playing flyhalf instead of scrumhalf, Melissa is playing wing instead of center, Lynelle is playing center instead of flanker and the list goes on. But these changes are all about the combinations as Mark keeps reminding us. If we can find the right combination it doesn't matter what position we play.

Training was really good as we were able to simplify some of the things that were confusing everyone in Kansas City and our timing has improved IMMENSELY. You can tell we are starting to trust each other and feel each other out more. I think we will be really successful on Friday against the South. We are a very talented team that has a lot of fun off the field and we need to bring that discipline and fun to the field on Friday.

Well its about 10 minutes till our next training, so gotta go! I will try and post some pictures later this week.

West 2007 All Stars Roster

KJ Abel- Ruch
Molly Albano
Breanna Alexander
Sara Edwards
Molly Rose Graves
Joy Hernandez
Allegra Howell
Devin Keller
Jen Kelley
Kim Klahn
Alena Kolarsky
Jenny Kuchar
Lynelle Kugler
Jaime Lange
Melissa McKibben
Cody Monroe
Angie Poe
Mandy Rasmussen
Erin Riley
Sarah Webel
Lindsay Wieczorek
Katie Wurst
Wendy Young


Coaches
Mark Bullock
Geoff Old
Susan Stabler
Wendy Cook

Ladies-

I have just spoken to the Bloodfest authorities and have managed to get the price of the tournament reduced.

$125 if PRE-PAY and $150 the day off!!!

This is CHEAP CHEAP! If possible they are asking that we all pre-pay so that we can have CONFIRMED teams. Please go to http://www.hunsrugby.com/ and pre-pay using paypal. You can pay with credit card or if you have paypal...well you know how it works.

IF YOU ARE COMING, but cannot pre-pay, please EMAIL ME ASAP!!!

Thanks,
WE

As you can see I have changed the site again. Finally found a simple, clean 3 column hack that I liked.

Look forward to blogging from the National All Star Championships this weekend...hopefully I will be motivated to blog! I leave tomorrow around 2pm and return Monday afternoon...here's to a week of hard training and matches!

Wish me luck!

The Austin Valkyries Women’s Rugby Club is in need of an experienced and motivated coach. Currently, our self-coached team is the reigning champion of the West Division I and is widely regarded as the team to beat. Our enthusiastic and well-trained squad routinely competes against teams from other cities and in national-level tournaments and includes players from all over the United States. Our skill levels range from those who have played for national-level teams to those who are eager to learn a new sport.

We are continuously looking for ways to increase our level of play and recruit high-caliber players and staff to the Valkyries. A passionate and qualified coach who also enjoys having fun would considerably help us improve and expand both our skill level and excitement for the game. Our practices are Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7pm to 9pm at Burnett Middle School, located in north Austin. We would like a coach to begin in late August and help train us through the fall. The position is on a volunteer basis, but the rewards will be immeasurable.

If interested, email a team officer with a resume and letter of intent.

Sincerely,

Austin Valkyries

Shannon Shafer sshafer@aol.com – President
Traci Schmidtke tschmidtke@gmail.com – Treasurer
Stephanie Dorsey stephanie.dorsey@gmail.com – Recruiting
Wendy Young scooterwe@gmail.com – Match Secretary
Tiffany Hall discoti@gmail.com - Fundraiser
Rachel Kraft rhkraft@gmail.com – Equipment Manager