The tournament had a few hiccups at the beginning due to clubs committing to play and then backing out at the last minute. But in the end there were 8 men's clubs and 5 women's clubs ready to play.
I'll begin with the ladies. We had 11 of 15 women make the drive to play. They kicked off their season with a match against long time rival Sam Houston St. then played Angelo St and finished with playing a new club East Texas Baptist University.
The ladies played fierce and they all showed true warrior aspects, we had a number of surprising things occurred that day. Rubab, showing that she will becoming a player that thinks - you come near me, you'll go down. Melanie, emerged as a devastating tackler and ball carrier. Cari has picked up where she left off and new coming Kayla showing that she can do rugby as well as she did kick ball. There were more people there and they all played extremely well, many more will be named a lot due to our short season and the way they are improving.
The ladies ended up winning one, losing one and tied the last game, so all in all, the girls had a very good day.
The men began their season with matches against Rice University, Angelo St. and SMU. All 3 matches were very entertaining and competitive. The men had the same record as the women, one win, one loss and one draw. On the whole there were a lot of things going on and players began to gell with each other and that was fun to watch.
We had 3 first time Try scorers, Talhah, while playing for us in a limited season, he scored his first try in the first game against Rice. Then came trys by Kevin and Coleman against SMU. Coleman's try against SMU was the culmination of a lot of fun, both watching his parents cringe when he either got tackled or made the tackle and then go wild when Coleman dotted the try.
This coming weekend, the ladies open their 2016 season at UT Dallas with their season and league opener against East Texas Baptist University (ETBU). The match will kick off about 6:00pm on field 6 on the UT Dallas campus.
Brief scouting report on ETBU, this is their first season and many of the ladies only began playing rugby this past weekend. This will be a very good match to come out and be entertaining
The men are waiting for confirmation from SMU on weather or not they will be allowed to play. SMU approached us and asked if we would consider playing them on their parents weekend. if the match is a go, I'll post it and the kick off time.
Brief scouting report, SMU has big, athletic players and I have heard that they now have a coach, so with those combinations, we could be in for a cracker of a match
This will be our last chance to play a friendly match with anyone, since our league kicks off on Oct. 8th.