First, as you all know we were selected to host the “Cowboy Cup Qualifier” what this means is the top 2 teams from Texas Collegiate DIII will play the top 2 Colorado Collegiate DIII clubs in late March.
Second, this is still pending, but we have submitted a bid to host the Lonestar Championships as well. Our bid has been submitted, and it is still open for other clubs to submit their bid. Bids are to be submitted by January 26th and within a week or so the announcement will be made. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed so that we can have a trial run at hosting 4 quality rugby matches here on the UT Dallas campus and show everyone how good we are, both as a rugby club and hosts.
Third, this isn’t the good news I had hoped to give, but our Women’s debut against TCU has been postponed due to the fact that the UT Dallas Women’s Rugby Club must be recognized by the university before it can play a match. Our president Alyssa has been meeting with myself, Dominic and Chris McAlpine and has turned in the proper paperwork. The decision will take a couple of weeks, and we’re confident that it will be approved and our Women’s club will come to life.
The women have been practicing with the men in order to hone their skills and learn this exciting game. Our first meeting this past Monday, we had 12 women attend the meeting and our first practice with the men. On Friday we had 2 more ladies interested in becoming members and now our numbers are up to 14. This is great to see how things are progressing.
I’d like to thank Alyssa for all of her hard work and diligence in putting this together and submitting it to the Rec Sports Dept. Also thanks goes out to Dominic Prestia and Nathan Sohadesni who helped her in her quest to get those documents.
Last, my thanks to Chris McAlpine for believing in the girls to form their rugby club. I’d also like to personally congratulate Chris and his wife Stephanie for the birth of their first daughter. Born January 18th, her name is Eleanor Violet. We wish mom, daughter and dad all the best.
Now back to our upcoming match against LeTourneau on the 26th of January. I’ve posted directions to the match. Our match with LeTourneau last fall was a great match, while the score didn’t indicate how close LeTourneau was to winning the match. It will be a different story when we travel to Longview for their first home match ever.
As we know hosting your first home match can be very gratifying and especially if you are able to come out with the victory and that’s exactly what they intend on doing. They've become a more experienced club and will be very confident in our match against them. I expect to see the same thing they did against us in Richardson, so we’ll have to be just as physical, smart and fit and play our game.
We’ve had two good practices and plan on having a good turnout this coming week as we prepare for this upcoming match. It should be a real barn burner; both clubs have talented players, so
everything will be left on the
field.