Published on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
ESPN Recognizes Cal Rugby
This week, ESPN.com is featuring a few of the best non-NCAA-sanctioned programs in the country.
Link to article: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2930194&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab4pos2
Jack Clark has built Cal Rugby into a national powerhouse.
University of California men's rugby player Dustin Watson has never "shot the boot."
Not once, he says, has the desire to ingest a beverage composed of Tinactin antifungal cream and cheap light beer from a smelly Size 12 crossed his mind. Instead Watson and his teammates have an almost unquenchable thirst for something much sweeter: perfection.
"I feel like everyone [on] the team has the same feeling even if we beat a team by 80 points," Watson said. "We kind of try to look at every game as taking a step forward regardless of what happens. You always want to improve as a player."
The players' desire to perform flawlessly on the pitch is the motivating factor that has helped the Golden Bears become the gold standard in college rugby and one of the premier programs in any collegiate sport. Cal's 37-7 triumph over BYU in the National Collegiate Rugby Championship on May 5 gave the Bears their 14th title in 15 seasons. Since the tournament's inception in 1980, there have been only five seasons (1984, 1987, 1989, 1990 and 2003) in which Cal was not crowned as America's top collegiate rugby team.
Jack Clark, who became the sixth rugby coach in school history when he took over in 1984, has guided the Bears to 19 national championships.
"It is hard to say you reached your potential without putting your guts into it, without giving everything you could to attain that status," Clark says. "We're pretty crazed about getting better and being the best that we can be."
The squad's winning tradition -- the aforementioned practice of drinking beer from a player's boot might be the only time-honored rugby ritual the Golden Bears don't embrace -- is part of what makes the program such a unique one. The team's 125-year history, the longest of any sport at Cal, has produced 103 All-Americans, 36 players for the U.S. national team, six Olympians and countless devout fans.
Of course, the program's past triumphs don't determine on-field results today.
"The tradition has always been a large part of Cal rugby," three-time All-American forward Chris Biller said. "It's like any other dominant program -- tradition only goes so far, the players and coaches have to be fully committed. That can be tedious at times. There is a lot of work which makes [the team] successful."
The Bears defy the mainstream perception of what a rugby team should be, which, fair or unfair, paints a picture of a motley crew somewhat reminiscent of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity in "Animal House."
That's not to say the members of the team don't have a good time -- they do. The Bears say they're just as engaged in Playstation and partying as most of their peers.
In Berkeley, however, rugby is not a sport for beer-bellied boys or seldom-shaven men. Cal's men's rugby team, in fact, is defined by its class and dedication.
"I know that at other schools [rugby] is kind of a joke and that kind of makes me mad," Watson said. "We put all the time and energy into it. People that view rugby as a drinking sport kind of soil the game a little. We are trying to take it as serious as possible here."
That businesslike approach requires dedication fr