During the off season, Bear and I met with someone interested in coming out to help coach, but the jury will have to deliberate as we begin our campaign to see if they will be joining us. This past summer has taken it's toll on the UT Dallas Women's Rugby Club, being that we lost 2 of our returning players that were key to our success last year. Both are out this year due to financial obligations. We'll miss Baylie and Ashley this year and hopefully get them back next year. The door will always be open for them and they will be missed. On the men's side, we possibly lost Michael due to a reoccurring injury that has kept him sidelined for the past 2 years. He had surgery on his back last January in hopes that all that was behind him, but we'll have to wait and see.
On the returning Women's side, players like Victoria, Mel, Cari, Elaine, Camille and Alyssa will create the corner stone of our program. Along with strong recruiting and retention, we hope that Jacey, Jonathan and myself have enough players to build a team around. The schools/clubs in the women's conference are Letourneau, Angelo St. Texas St., Sam Houston, University of North Texas and UT San Antonio.
On the men's side, we have Caleb and Daniel back from their 1st and 2nd Lonestar Conference All Star Tour to Canada and ready to put back on the Green and Orange, more about them later. Other players, Edmund, Zach, Eric, Manny to name a few will be also trying to help retain the large recruiting class interested in this great game. The schools/clubs in the Men's conference are Angelo St. Letourneau, St. Edward's, Stephen F. Austin, Rice, UT San Antonio.
This year we have a full schedule with the Men and Women playing together on 3 and maybe 4 weekends. 1 maybe 2 weekends at home (UT Dallas), and 2 weekends away at either UTSA or ASU.
Both the men and women have challenging schedules which will or should bring out the best in each of the players. As coaches, Bear, Jonathan and Jacey and any other person that wants to donate their time to helping these kids become better at what they do.
Both of our men and women's schedules are posted on this web site, take a look at it and we hope to see you at one if not all of those games. As the season rolls on, I'll be posting blogs to let everyone know what's going on and how we're progressing. When the season begins, I'll post weekly after our matches with all the details of each match.
Wish us luck and we'll see you during season.