Well everything looked good, the players got the goal posts up, goal post pads, rope barriers up by 2:00. We were ready to begin warm ups, then everything went south.
The rains came in, not that rain could stop a rugby player, but lighting can stop any and all games on the UT Dallas soccer fields and that was the beginning. Our Rec Sports Director Chris McAlpine was on the phone with the UT Dallas Athletic Director and his people in the hopes of getting our rugby match in as well as a UT Dallas NCAA Soccer match completed. Briefly, the Athletic Dept. protocol on lighting is to wait 20 minutes from the last strike, if no more lighting - play on. If another strike, the clock restarts with a fresh 20 But Mother Nature wasn't going to have any of this or maybe the rugby gods felt that both UT Dallas and St. Edward's didn't need to play a match on this day.
Since we were unable to get our last tune up match before league begins, we'll just have to do everything on the fly next week when our league season begins.
Speaking of league openers, next weekend (10/5/13) we will have our first UT Dallas Women's Rugby Club match ever in history. The women open up against Rice University, kick off for this match is 3:00pm. The men begins their league opener against McMurray University at 5:00pm.
Rice University Women's Rugby is a new club and very similar to UT Dallas Women's Rugby, this should be a very good match and it could go either way. One other note on this upcoming game, due to the fact that Rice may not have 15 players, we could play 7's or 10's meaning instead of 15 players like you may be used to seeing, there may be 7 or 10 or more on the field doing the exact same thing. We won't know what until later this week, when we hear from Rice.
McMurray University is a new club in the Lonestar Conference and new to rugby as well. Being new to rugby doesn't mean they aren't good, we proved that 3 seasons ago. We don't know anything about them, but plan on preparing for anything and just be ready to play our game.
Thank you for your support, and we'll see you out next Saturday at both club's league openers.