The Manliest Sport Of All

I have spent a good portion of this week watching rugby. This is because, for my television production class, I am putting together a piece on the Long Island Rugby Club. So, I spent Saturday at a game, Tuesday night at a practice and then yesterday I edited for hours.
I have always been intrigued by rugby and this project has enlightened me on what rugby is really all about. First of all the rules are simpler than I was expecting. It is pretty much nonstop play for 80 minutes. There is a very short break half way through. When this break happened at the game I was at a wife or girlfriend of one of the players brought out a big bowl of orange slices for the boys to eat for the few minutes. The most well known rule of rugby is that there is no forward passing only lateral and backward passing is acceptable. The ball can also be kicked at anytime in the game. A guy can only be tackled if he has possession of the ball. There are no substitutions and if you go out of the game for any reason you cannot come back in.
When the ball goes out of bounds there are a couple of ways to get it back into play. The first is called a lift; this is when one to three players are literally lifted up by their teammates to catch the ball as it comes in bounds. The second way is called a scrum, this is when each team links arms to form this giant huddle and the ball is placed in the middle. It is kicked around in the middle until it manages to get out of the huddle and into the hands of player that was not in the huddle. Both of these moves are very interesting to watch.
One of the funnier things I observed during the game is that the players consider water the magical cure. Anytime a guy went down a bottle of water was run out to him and after a few sips he got up and was ready to play again. Someone nailed the ref at one point in the knee and he went down hugging his knee to his chest. He was down for a while and I thought he was going to have to stop calling the game but some water was brought out to him and like magic he got up and refereed the rest of the game.
Guys of all shapes and sizes play this game and as one of the players in my piece said, “We are not getting paid to play we do it for the love of the game.” In most of the player’s interviews they said they liked the physicality of the game but also the brotherhood that is created on a team.
The Long Island Rugby Team is ranked in the top nationally and they play internationally every year. I would recommend to anyone to go see this team play or any team for that matter because it is an exciting game to watch.

Game story

This is my first game story of a Hofstra baseball game. I am pretty proud of it because I haven't been to a baseball game in years or ever written a game story.

Hofstra University let another win get away from them. The Pride was defeated, 6-2, by James Madison University in game two of a Colonial Athletic Association series at home this afternoon. This lose brings the Pride to 8-18 overall this season and 0-11 in the CAA.

“The 6th inning is the only thing that stands out in my mind.” said starting pitcher Nick Panzarella. The game had been scoreless until James Madison short stop, Mike Fabiaschi, hit straight up the middle allowing right fielder, Matt Browning, who was on third base, a chance to score a run. James Madison proceeded to score four more runs while rotating their entire line up though to bat. By the end of the sixth inning James Madison was up 4-0.

The Pride changed pitchers from Nick Panzarella to Drew Luedtke to Ryan Radke, during the inning to try to stop the string of hits. At the top of the eighth inning they changed to Brody Fontaine to finish the game.

Head coach, Chris Dotolo, admitted, “We didn’t swing well that’s for sure.” The Pride managed to score two runs in the seventh inning. But before that Elliot Hagburg was the only Pride player to have even made it on to a base, and that was in the fourth inning. The first of the Pride to score was Matt Prokopowicz. James Madison first baseman Steven Caseres dropped a pop-up in the infield allowing Prokopowicz enough time to reach home from second. Then Jeff Guthridge hit a single into left field, which lead to Hagburg, who was already on second base from an earlier error, to score Hofstra’s final run of the game.

James Madison scored one more run in the eight inning bringing the final score to 6-2. The James Madison pitcher Justin Wood completed the game and gave up only one hit.

Coach Dotolo was upset with the team’s performance. He feels that the biggest improvement that needs to be made is in the hitting area. His spirits are not completely crushed over this lose, “in all of the years that I have been coach a team has never been this far in the hole but we only have one way to go and that is up.”

Awesome

Monday night was almost too much to handle. The Jayhawks came so close to losing but then Mario Chalmers saved the day with an amazing three pointer in the last seconds to take the game into overtime. The Jayhawks then proceeded to take the lead and become national champions.

Part of me wishes I could have been in Lawrence to see it explode into jubilation but then the other part of me doesn’t like big crowds of screaming drunks. So, my celebration probably would not have been much different than what it was here in my dorm. Since I know you are all dieing to know the celebration involved some jumping up and down and yelling.

Hurray!

As you all can probably guess I am pretty excited about the Jayhawks making it to the Final Four. It was a close heart wrenching game with that close of a score the entire time. They also had a lot of people rooting against them for a couple of reasons. The first being that people did not want just number one seeds in the finals. The second being that people wanted the Cinderella story of number ten seed Davidson continuing. The Jayhawks crushed the hearts of all those aforementioned by taking the win.
Now that the team is continuing they are playing the North Carolina Tar Heels. This is interesting because the North Carolina coach is Roy Williams (as you all probably know) who you might or might not know coached for the Jayhawks. Williams coached 15 seasons at Kansas from 1988-2003. After taking the Jayhawks to face Syracuse in the NCAA championship game and losing Williams left for UNC.
This caused an uproar in the Kansas University community. People felt betrayed by him especially some of the players. This distraught has all but been forgotten. Bill Self has kept the reputation of the university’s basketball team alive. And even Self has been accepted although rumors fly about the town about him having a toupee. It is one fine looking toupee if it is one or maybe he just has a hair phobia?
Anyway, I cannot wait for the show down between Williams and Self. It is going to be a grand game. I also cannot help feeling that the Jayhawks might be doomed against the mega-force that is the Tar Heels, but that won’t keep me from screaming at the television screen.