Right now the lads will enjoy the day off from practice, but we'll get together Wednesday night.
The Cowboy Cup Qualifier kicked off the competition in Austin at Burr Field with some great spring weather. First up in this competition, UT Dallas vs the University of Denver, yep that's right the same UD that we ran into last year when UTD hosted the inaugural Cowboy Cup.
The Line up:
1. Jonathan Holmes, 2. Alex Wright, 3. Daniel Wadhi, 4. John Bradshaw, 5. Weston Hearne, 6. A.J. Paradowski, 7. Elliott Zieba, 8. Ahmad Moayyed, 9. Cam Broussard, 10. Andrew Whiteis, 11. Justin Thompson, 12. Vince Dutton, 13. Marc Hudac, 14. Alejandro Chinchilla, 15. Brian Martinez
Replacements: 16. Luke Lewis for 13. Marc, 23. Nicky DiCarlo for 16. Luke, 19. Jacob Pesnell for 8. Ahmad, 20. Zach Richied for 11. Justin, 22. Mohammad Nadeem for 7. Elliott.
It seemed like UD was even bigger than they were last year, but we took the field with the belief that we could knock them out of contention, but that wasn't going to be reality. It took about 3 minutes for the UD Center to run up the middle to score his first of 4 Trys on the day. While the first half belonged to UD, the lads in Green and Orange fought tooth and nail with UD and they had to earn every point they got on the day. When the second half began, it seemed new life had been instilled in the UT Dallas lads, they came out and put together a series of plays and maintained ball control and moved down the pitch and made things exciting. Alejandro and Nicky both scored Trys against UD and Vince converted one of those to give us 12 points which is 5 more than we scored last year. In all the lads played very well considering the David vs Goliath. The final score UT Dallas 12, UD 53.
Saturday evening, the team met at County Line on the Hill for a Bar B Que dinner and some interesting discussions, it was a great time being with everyone and thank you Rick Martinez for helping set it up (it was John Bradshaw's idea to go there) and taking care of the dinner for the lads. Thank you to Heather and John Bradshaw for supplying sandwiches after the match for the players. To the Martinez and Bradshaw family thank you for supplying the lads with water and "Gatorade". Thank you Suzi, for jumping in to assist Heather in the making of all those great tasting sandwiches. If I am forgetting to mention any of the parents for anything they did to help our guys compete I apologize and THANK YOU.
Sunday morning, the rare 11am rugby match, but that's what was in store for UT Dallas and the University of New Mexico Highlands Rugby Club. We kicked off shortly after 11am to again unseasonably cold weather, probably brought in either by UD or UNMH darn those clubs.
The line up:
1. Jonathan Holmes, 2. Alex Wright, 3. Daniel Wadhi, 4. John Bradshaw, 5. Weston Hearne, 6. A.J. Paradowski, 7. Matt Boydston, 8. Mohammad Nadeem, 9. Cam Broussard, 10. Andrew Whiteis, 11. Marc Hudac, 12. Vince Dutton, 13. Luke Lewis, 14. Alejandro Chinchilla, 15. Joe Conover
Replacements: 22. Jacob Pesnell for 2. Alex, 16. Stephen McMahon for 12. Vince, 17. Nicky DiCarlo for 13. Luke, 18. Zach Richied for 14. Alejandro, 21. Christian Sweeney for 5. Weston, 19. Arturo Sifuentes for 11. Marc, 20 Brian Martinez for 9. Cam
The match was played and while UNMH may have been bigger (and the sun did disappear a couple of times their second row ran by us on the sidelines) we again played with the heart of a lion. This didn't stop us from our game, they guys tackled, rucked and ran the ball with some great moves and led by the captains John Bradshaw and Vince Dutton there was new life infused in this team, at the end of the first half the score was tied 12 each. Reserves were brought in during the second half and it was then that UNMH took advantage of the lack of experience and ran in a couple of Trys, but we managed, my opinion the try of the weekend. It came when UT Dallas forwards put together a series of great pick and goes, then got the ball out to the backs who then advanced the ball down field, made a nice pass to the outside center Nicky DiCarlo who made and inside then out move found some space and ran down the 5 meter line and just as his opponent committed to make the tackle, he off loaded to a flying Zach Richied who scored in the corner for his first Try. Also scoring for UT Dallas, Matt Boydston on a great move from a restart, the forwards ran down the kick, which UNMH juggled and dropped, Daniel Wadhi picked up the ball charged down the field and like Nicky as he felt pressure coming down on him, he off loaded to Matt, who streaked into goal for his first Try. Scoring on this day, Trys scored by Vince Dutton, Zach Richied, Matt Boydston and Vince also had a conversion. The final score UT Dallas 17, UNMH 36.
It was a good weekend for everyone and while we may not have achieved the goals we wanted, each one of these lads contributed to every thing the club accomplished this year and years past. Next year, we'll do our best to start another winning streak and see where that takes us.
More info on the Texas Cup to come shortly.