Rugby Loss Signals Coming Changes

Right: NMT Rugby co-captains Pat Garcia and Pat Simons, with fellow December graduation candidate Justin Swafford, following their final match as Pygmies in Las Vegas Saturday. The Vatos beat the Pygmies 39-10.

SOCORRO, N.M., Nov. 1, 2005 – Although Saturday's 39-10, season-ending loss to the Vatos Rugby Club in Las Vegas, New Mexico was a bitter enough pill to swallow, the real pain came well after the final whistle. That's when hooker Chad Arnold, a second-year man with loads of rugby before him, broke the news to me that he won't be returning for next spring's rugby season. I further learned Monday morning that Steve Huelskamp, like Chad, is departing New Mexico Tech to join the nursing program at the University of New Mexico next semester. While wishing them the best of luck with their futures, these announced departures remind me of the dramatic changes we'll soon be seeing in the rugby program at New Mexico Tech.

The Vatos promised to be stiff competition in light of their capture last spring of the Western U.S. Rugby Union's division three championship. As I told the Techies well before this match, it would take a supreme effort to defeat the Vatos in New Mexico Highlands University's Perkins stadium. Unfortunately when the day rolled around the Pygmies were handicapped by an unusually small pool of travelers, just 14 men for a 15-position game. We borrowed a second-string wing from the home team and kicked off.

Although the Vatos spotted us a gift try by allowing Pat Garcia to chase down Pat Simons's opening kick for a try in less than one minute, it was tough sledding the rest of the way. While the Pygmies battled hard and went to halftime tied with their hosts at ten points, they just couldn't keep up their intensity in the face of the Las Vegas
club's second-half substitutions. While there was only glory in the way our boys played, the Vatos were able to pour in 17 points in the last six minutes against our exhausted bunch.

Sage Latorra collected his teammate's consensus as Man of the Match in a losing cause, and the Vatos chose our freshman flanker Britt Catron as their most difficult opponent, mostly for his determined tackling. Tory Tadano played well in his first game at flyhalf, a switch made necessary when Seth Daly came down with a suspected case of pneumonia.

With this December's round of graduation, the Pygmies will lose the outsized talents of co-captain Patrick Simons, the try-scoring capabilities of veteran Michael Bauer, and the promise of backline all-rounder Justin Swafford, who returned to the club after taking a year off midway through his college career. The stars must be in a very awkward formation, for I've recently become aware of a much higher rate of turnover than the usual two or three young men.

By the time classes end in May, we will have lost an additional five players to graduation, another through transfer, and one who is taking a semester off from college. We will be looking to replace 12 players, or fully 4/5 of a playing side, by autumn of 2006. A daunting recruiting task, but somehow these things always seem to work out in the end. It may take time to mold another group into a team capable of matching this one's 10-4 fall record, but half the fun is getting there, and the Pygmies have always relished living up to their motto: we do more with less.

-NMT-