Coach's home club crushes Tech's rugby dream

by Dave Wheelock, NMT Rugby Director

Photo, right: NMT's Justin Swafford, #20, advances the ball in Tech's April 23 59-19 loss to the Santa Fe Rugby Club. Preparing to fall into a support position is Tory Tadano (right).

"Pygmy Rugby!" --- "Vivan Los Santos!"

A shiver of excitement swept over me as the respective chorus of voices rang out from each team's pre-match huddle. The occasion was the first full-on contest in over six years between the two rugby clubs with whom I have passed a total of over 20 years, the Santa Fe Rugby Football Club and the New Mexico Tech RFC.

On April 2 we had run Santa Fe close, losing 11 to 7 in the third match of our own Socorro Club and Collegiate Challenge. With six teams in attendance, playing times were limited to twenty-minute halves. Last Saturday's inter-divisional "friendly" at Santa Fe's luxurious rugby complex was the real deal - 80 minutes of what the boys and I hoped could be Tech's first-ever victory over this perennial men's division powerhouse. The dream was high and even heroic, the reality cruel: Santa Fe 59, New Mexico Tech 19.

In that abbreviated match three weeks earlier, the Santos had narrowly dodged scoring bullets on a couple of first-half plays and were lucky to prevail. The Pygmies and I knew the rematch offered a real chance, much as we had beaten El Paso RFC, another club division team, the second time around on that same day early in April.

In between had come a heavy defeat to the Vatos RFC of Las Vegas on April 17, a game in which our Pygmies admitted to being intimidated by the physicality of the larger club side players. We had worked extensively on tackling in the interim, and there would be no intimidation today.

Instead, Saturday we fell victims to a well-oiled Santa Fe machine, who were far more focused this time around. The Santos cleanly fielded the opening kickoff and efficiently maintained ball possession through several tackles, crafting a two-minute play that ended only when loosehead prop(and former Pygmy) Jason Soto had touched down for a try. By rugby law, the non-scoring team must kick off to restart play, and the Santos left their intentions in no doubt by repeating the feat after another four minutes, with another former Pygmy, John Ellis, twisting the knife this time.

To our fellows' credit, the reason these scoring plays took so long was that the Pygmies were tackling like men. The hesitancy and half-hearted, clutching tackles of the previous week had given way in the main to real, shoulder-on-thigh rugby tackles, on occasion audible from where I stood on the touchline.

Where Santa Fe held the upper hand on this day was in quickly binding together over their tackled teammates to prevent the Pygmies from stealing the ball. Conversely, our hosts utilized craftiness born of superior experience at the club level to often strip our players of possession.

Santa Fe club president Jason Wiles, who significantly is also a former NMT player, had told me his team's perspective on this match in light of the close result in Socorro. "We're really interested in attracting your graduates to play in Santa Fe. How can we expect to land them if we don't beat you guys?"

I could feel my heart sinking as I watched our flyhalf Rob Harrison's penalty goal attempt sail narrowly to the left eight minutes in, and then a running penalty opportunity left begging when one of the boys inexplicably dropped the ball with open space ahead. Santa Fe was not going to allow us many opportunities, and by the time our Matt Nelson scored after some picture book passing rugby, the home team held a 26-7 lead on tries by Sean Christian and Joe Roebuck. Dave Jondreau added another try at the worst time, the sounding of the halftime whistle, to leave us adrift 31-7.

The second half was more torture as Santa Fe tacked on four more tries while the Pygmies could muster only two. Still, I was proud of the quality of our scores, and the fact our boys once again showed no quit. One of our several remarkable young wings, Ivan Mecimore, staged an impressive sprint around the defense to score untouched, and several Pygmies combined to put Matt Nelson into the try zone for the second time. Once again Santa Fe scored seven points just before the closing whistle to add salt to our wounds.

I guess the good thing about athletics is that one isn't allowed much time to rue ill fate. The "Pygs" will be back in action at 1:00 Saturday, hosting New Mexico State University in our regular-season finale. A major pull at the heartstrings will be the occasion of the last match as Pygmies for seniors David Yazzie, Robert Harrison, Paul Quintana, and Nick Tarasenko. The memories we've made together throughout their Tech rugby careers have been thoroughly worthy of the long Pygmy tradition and will never be forgotten.