Cherry Blossom Tournament 2008

For some odd reason, I'm feeling pretty good about life. That's odd because nothing has been particularly good in the past week or two, but I've just been generally more cheerful.

Maybe it's the spring - things blooming, getting warmer? Maybe it's the planets aligning? Who knows.

One of the effects of this renewed happiness has been me falling back in love with rugby. Now, don't get me wrong, I never really fell out of love... but sometimes, when I'm busy and tired and it's cold/rainy, I get a little cranky that I still need to go to rugby where I will inevitably get hit and be sore and be even MORE tired and I need that time to do work! Not to mention all the business I have to take care of as treasurer.

But over the past week or so, I remembered how much I care. Not for any particular reason, but instead of "oh MAN, something else to do!" I've been working hard in the gym and trying to find time to watch the World Cup games I still have on my DVR and generally having "rugby player" moved up on my list of priorities.


This weekend we went to the Cherry Blossom Tournament, a big annual tournament that used to be on the mall (under the cherry blossoms), but isn't anymore because... well, spring = rain + ruggers = really messy ground = not nice for tourists. So now it's held at a racetrack.

Saturday was supposed to be awful weather, but ended up beautiful - mid-fifties, cloudy but with patches of sun. We started off the day playing West Virginia on a muddy pitch with quite a few lakes and patches of ankle-deep mud. I was flanking strong-side (MY FAVORITE, especially when the opposition's flyhalf is a cute as the WV's was - I do enjoy tackling an attractive rugger girl!). AU played really, really well - especially considering the ref was about as bad as you can get: we scored a try that he wouldn't call because "he couldn't see it".

However, we just went back and scored another try about 30 seconds later. So that worked out okay. I was very proud of us, because usually we get really upset at bad refs (or other teams playing dirty, i.e. the UMD game in the fall) and we get caught up in our heads and don't play as a team, but Saturday we realized that "you can't do anything about the ref" and kicked ass despite having an AWFUL ref. Final score: 12-7, AUWRFC.

In the afternoon, we played Xavier University, which is apparently located in Cincinnati? By then the sun was out and the ground was much dryer (we were on a different pitch, too, which had fewer puddles to start with). This game I locked, and oh man... I have NEVER wanted to be flanking instead so badly! AU had a little more trouble with this game, even though when we'd watched Xavier play WV earlier we'd thought they'd be easy (big girls, but slow, didn't run low, and didn't come up hard). AU was not nearly as aggressive as we needed to be (thus me DYING to be flanking), but we did well enough to keep them back and score one try of our own. FInal score: 5-0, AUWRFC.

This put us in the top bracket for Sunday - which dawned as cold and miserable as Saturday had been supposed to be. We played Army at 9:30 am on a pitch that was part mud, part lake.

It's been a long time since I played a game that messy, but AU played REALLY well. Despite the mess and the cold and the wet and the mud (I probably weighed about ten pounds extra, between the mud and the water soaking me all the way to my underwear), we never stopped and never slowed down and kept coming up hard and aggressive. I was strong-side flanking again, though I ended up eighting for a bit at the end. We lost, not too surprisingly, but we definitely kept them from scoring as much as they could've AND scored a try against them! Final score: something - 5, Army.

I haven't done a lot of game writeups this season, but generally I'm beginning to feel really good about my playing. Between being sick and busy, I'm still not as strong or fast as I'd like to be, but technically I think I've really improved. I've started making different decisions in rucks (like long-body rucking or sealing over my teammates) and reacting to how both AU and the other team are arranged across the field. I've also gotten a lot better at scrumming - I've figured out flanking much better, and over just the past week or so I've really figured out a good locking body position.

I do still need to work on my form in tackles (I am aggressive and effective, but with better form I'd use less energy and hurt myself less), and I'd like to be a bit better at lineouts. Flanking, I'm not always off the scrum fast enough, and overall I do still have some work to do on field awareness and strategy - for example when to use a short vs. long lineouts, etc.

But there will always be room for improvement. Overall, I'm definitely feeling good!

More or less related: on Saturday, I experimented with wearing my new molded cleats (the ones with spike cleats) instead of metal. And, oh man, RIGHT CHOICE. Maybe not if I'd been locking, but my feet felt SO much lighter without those nasty heavy metal spikes weighing me down. If I ever feel the need to get metal again, I've gotta look smaller and lighter, but I think I'm sticking to molded for now.