To all,

The Towson men’s rugby team ended the season in style winning the Rites of Spring tournament over the weekend. Many of you will remember this as the Preakness tournament held every year in early May. We played at beautiful Bocek field in downtown Baltimore on two hot and sultry days.

As we have done in other recent tournaments, we were the only team to enter two sides. We do this with the hope that our B side players will get a taste of stronger competition and make them ready that much faster to compete for a position on the A side. Also, this insures that everybody gets to play in multiple games over the weekend and we do not have half our team standing around not playing.

Given the large number of games and my propensity to write long novels about our weekend play, I will give you a short synopsis of each game. Our B side started the day with a very close loss to a division one team, Union of New Jersey. We scored early on a counter attack by our full back who ran the ball in from the midfield. Unions much bigger pack took control and small balled our forwards for a try. They missed the kick and we were up 7-5 with only a few minutes left. A 30 yard try for TU was waived off late due to an inadvertent whistle by the referee. Several penalties against TU led to a late score and TU fell 10-7 on the last play of the game. While we lost the game, the B side competed admirably against a division one men’s team.

The A side took the field against White Horse of Philadelphia. We came out strong and dominated all phases of the game and won the game by a final score of 39 – 8. We scored in all phases of the game. Our back line play has been outstanding and we felt that if we got them the ball that we could run against anybody in the tournament.

The B side was up next against another men’s club, the Washington Renegades. Washington had a huge, experienced pack and it showed as they dominated play against our small pack. They controlled the clock, kept possession, and rolled to a 26 – 7 victory. While we have some very good athletes on the B side most of them have played less then 10 games and it showed.

Next up for the first fifteen was the Tidewater Area Touring side from Newport News. This was a division three men’s team who was more interested in socializing and drinking beer then in playing serious rugby. The final score was 71 – 7. While it is hard to gauge the value of a game like this, we did continue to work on our schemes and executed them to perfection.

The B side played it’s final game of the day and lost to another men’s team, North Penn. This was a hard fought game and the boys competed well losing 17 – 7. While the B side finished the day losing all three games, we think they gained valuable experience playing against better competition than we normally see from other college B sides. I don’t know of any other college team that has entered a second side in these spring tournaments.

The A side finished the day with a resounding victory over the Rochester Colonials. The score was 19 – 0 at the half. After we scored another try a few minutes into the second half, Rochester threw the towel in and walked off the field trailing 24 – 0. I can’t think of any time in the ten years that I played that we gave up and didn’t finish the game. They also didn’t show for Sundays consolation game against our B side.

We entered Sunday as the number one seed and played North Penn in the semi final. We dominated the first half but were only winning by the score of 10 – 0. Our backs continued to get the ball wide and we had several long breaks. We did struggle to finish as we died with the ball on several occasions. Our style of rugby depends on passing the ball to support and being unselfish. We discussed the need to play as a team at half time. The second half was much better and we started to move the ball better. We scored several more tries and the final score was 29-7.

The team had an hour to rest and got the opportunity to make fun of their head coach as I played in the over 50 game. They were on me for all the things I tell them to do, but didn’t do myself. I got my one half of rugby in, didn’t get hurt, and retired at the half so that I could go and coach the A side in the championship game. Perfect.

We entered the finals against a seasoned men’s side, the Washington Renegades. They had done a pretty good job of whopping up on our B side and we knew they had a strong, aggressive pack. The game was very close in the first half even though the boys from TU were in control of the ball. We continued to run well and had several long breaks. Washington tackled well and the score at the half was 7 – 0. While I was uncomfortable with the close score, our boys were playing hard and we stressed the need to stick to our game plan. Our fitness took over in the second half and we rolled to a final score of 21 – 7. The 2010 Rites of Spring champions!!

While absolutely gassed the boys stuck around, drank a few beverages, and enjoyed the camaraderie that can only be achieved with shared sacrifice. What ever I get out of coaching, the smiles on their faces is more meaningful to me then anything else.

We ended our season with a stellar 13 – 2 record. We won the Rocky Gorge college tournament and the Rites of Spring men’s tournament. We outscored our opponents by a 198 – 22 over the weekend. Our B side finished the season with a 6 – 7 record, with all of their losses coming against other teams A sides. Our B side has not lost to another B side in over two seasons. The strength of our B side has allowed us to move up players to the A side as injuries take their toll during the season. Close to half of our players who played in the championship game played on the B side last season. We have several starters who have been injured and will make their return in the fall. We had only two seniors start yesterday and will return over ninety percent of our players for next year. We ended the season with about 45 players on the roster.

We look forward to the fall with the goals of winning the league title and advancing to the national playoffs. We feel we have the talent and commitment to reach these goals and the boys have dedicated themselves to coming back in the best shape of their lives.

We would like to thank all the alumni, parents, and girlfriends who have supported us this year.

Best regards,
Don