Summertime and the livings easy...

School's been out for a few weeks now and I'm just sitting back and relaxing. As I already blogged, we lost at Sweet 16s but I did make it out to Stanford to watch the DI championship games at Final Fours. The Stanford vs. Penn State game was a bit boring to be honest. I've really enjoyed watching Penn State the previous two years but this year it was like neither team could turn it on. It felt more like a game of attrition. As for the Cal vs. BYU game, that was more than a bit boring. Cal won and did so while playing some very pretty rugby but there was nothing truly exciting. At least the women's game had some nailbiting moments even if neither team was playing its best. In the men's game, Cal seemed to score before I even knew the game had started. In a championship there should at least be some chance that either team could win but BYU might as well not been on the field for all the fight they put up.

As for end of the year news, we had our banquet and said goodbye to our seniors. We also had officer elections and yours truly is the new president. Whee. Time for some tough love.

For anyone who's interested, I think we and the All Blues are putting together a joint 7s team. If you happen to be in the Berkeley area and want in, then contact me and I'll get you in touch with the right people. They'll be playing in the Palo Alto 7s tournament and the Midnight Rugby tournament in Las Vegas.

Lastly, a friend of mine and a former Cal player is looking to put together a team in the South Bay around San Jose. If that sparks some interest, lemme know and I'll get you in contact with her.

Sweet 16's in Alburquerque, NM

It was a long weekend but so worth it. We arrived late Thursday night and had a walk through Friday morning. The rest of the day was spent either resting, doing homework or watching some of the other games.

Our first game was bright and early on Saturday against Texas A&M. We lost but honestly, that was probably the hardest our team has every played. We played good defense but our problem was ball possession. They were good ruckers and we...well, we were not. When we did have ball in hand we were able to do things but it just didn't happen that often. Despite all the hype of the speed in their backline, I think we had more and they weren't able to run around us. They were able to bang it up the middle and their scrum was really good. Our number 1 said that the prop she went against was probably the best she had ever scrummed against. They did get tired in the second half and their backs did not want to tackle, which helped us come back and score two tries. Overall it was a game to be proud of. We lost but we kept in the game the whole time.

The game against Vassar on Sunday was not nearly as fun. Our team was tired and it showed. They just looked like they wanted it more. We did score 12 points again in the second half so it's not like we gave up. It was interesting to watch the Vassar team. It was pretty much a team of the 8, 9, and 10. The centers either were skipped or passed the ball back to the flyhalf. The back three could run but their catching was not up to par. I like that our team has skills across the board, not just in one particular player. Their flyhalf was very impressive though. She had good field vision and could kick.

We lost our two games but I'm still proud of our team. Our coach gave us a breakdown of the experience we had in our starting 15 and it's obvious that we're a very young team. We had only two four year players and only 3 or 4 three year players. Everyone else was either a first year vet or a rookie. I think that's pretty impressive especially compared to last year. We had a team stacked with third and fourth year players last year and high expectations to go with but we still didn't make it to Sweet 16's. This year with a team, that quite frankly did not impress me when I first saw them play Santa Cruz in January, we made it. So even though it's over and even though we didn't win, I'm satisfied. I think we put ourselves in a good place for next year.

As a whole our league did pretty well. Stanford is in the Final Four, both Davis and Chico made it to Elite Eight, and we most likely maintained the ranking we had coming in. The Cal men, of course, owned and St. Mary's also made it to Final Four. Unfortunately, they will be playing each other in the semifinals.

As for the actual event, I liked that everyone was in one place but I did have some grips.

Medical prepardness: One of our girls had an ashma attack that required her to go to the hospital. It took 30 minutes from the time we told the event staff that she needed an ambulance to the time the ambulance got there. That's just ridiculous. Yes, they were doing on site stuff to help her but in a tournament that has 48 teams playing a high contact sport there should be an ambulance waiting on site. It's just stupid not to have that.

Event gear: They made pink shirts. Pink? Seriously? I bought one because that was the only medium left but the only time I'll ever wear it is when everything else is in the laundry hamper. I understand that some people may like the pink but they should have ordered more of the green and blue. Also, order more smalls next time! We may play rugby but that does not mean we're all of amazon proportions. In the end we're young fit women in college, which means that when the shirts are in men sizes that most of us will probably wear small or medium.

Stagger the games: I would have liked to watch the Chico vs. Penn State game but I couldn't because it was at the same time as our game against Vassar.

Make shaded seating: The players want to watch other games but we can't sit out in the sun all day without the sun draining us for our own games.

Countdown to Sweet 16s

We're leaving Thursday evening for Albuquerque (Seriously, Albuquergue? A balloon park, wtf?). Between now and then I have several chapters to read, people I need to talk to, laundry to do, classes to sign up for, a resume to write and oh yea...a midterm. Wheee. Not that I'm not extremely excited. I'm just going to be running around like a chicken with it's head cut off until I get on that plane.

We'll arrive late Thursday night. On Friday, we'll have a short walk through and then just rest and maybe catch a game or two. Our game against Texas A&M will be at 9 o'clock Saturday morning. Whether we win or lose, our second game will be on Sunday at 8:30 am. Our opponent will either be Navy or Vassar.

Everyone has been going really hard at practice which is nice to see. We're just trying to do some last minute tune ups.

I don't quite know how to feel about Texas A&M. We are clearly the underdogs but that doesn't bother me. Honestly, we face some of the hardest teams in the nation during regular league season so I don't think they'll have anything that we haven't already seen. It will be whether or not we come out hard, and play smart. I'm not saying they're not good. I'm sure they are but between Stanford, Chico, Davis and even Reno and Humboldt, we've seen heart, speedy backs, scary forwards, and everything else. We've seen it; we know how to and can deal with it; we just have to do it. With us you never quite know which team is going to take the field. Anyways, like our coach said, we have to win because it just wouldn't be Sweet 16s without us playing a military school.

I'm really interested in how the whole 48 teams in one place is going to work. It's cool that they put everyone together. I never understood why they made half the the DI teams go to one state and the other half to another but I'm also not entirely sure that 48 teams is manageable. I'm ready for it to be a bit chaotic.

Good luck to all the NorCal schools!
Good luck to the Cal men, Stanford, Chico, and Davis!
Also, positive thoughts for Santa Cruz!
And for Claremont because that's my hometown!
And for UCLA because I'll always be a SoCal girl!
Finally, lots of good luck to US! Yay, we're going to nationals!

Now that I've used enough exclamation points to rival a middle school girl talking about her first crush, I'm going to go study. Tchau tchau.

Season and Playoffs Recap

Okay so I've been really bad about blogging. It's just not a priority. Oh well. Moving on...

We had our home game against Humboldt on Witter Field. We won and it was pretty. It was too long ago for me to remember the score or even whether we won by a small margin or blew them out of the water. It was good to win in front of all the family and friends that turned out. We had our alumni banquet afterwards and raised a good amount of money which is always a good thing.

Our final game of the season was against Chico. We played in Memorial Stadium. We lost, and badly. Chico was firing on all cylinders and we just couldn't stop them from breaking through. We got better as the game went on but that meant there were longer breaks between them scoring on us, not a comeback.

Over spring break, we went up to Canada to play UBC. They beat us. It was freezing, windy and rainy but I played the entire second half, which is the longest I've played since coming back so I was happy.

Playoffs were this past weekend. We handily beat University of Oregon. Things were a little slow in the first half but we turned it on in the second half. It was a good game and I was impressed by their behavior after the game. They came over as a team to where we were stretching to congratulate us and wish us luck. It was very classy. I talked to one of their players for a bit and I feel sorry for their team. There are only 3 teams in their league and so it is hard for them to get games. Then they have to come down for playoffs where they get repeatedly beat. It's not that they're bad. I think it's just that we have more playing opportunities. OSU didn't even show so Chico got a bye.

We played Chico the second day for seeding going into Sweet 16s. We lost terribly. We had about zero ball possession. We just were not on our game. It was not pretty to watch. It was also not the most friendly game. There were a lot of uncalled penalties, such as playing the ball on the ground. There were so many in fact, that the touch judges talked to the ref at half time. Also, one girl took a swing at our center and another girl clearly played our wing when she didn't have the ball. I have a lot of respect for Chico. They play well and with heart and off the field they are generally one of the friendlier teams in our league. In the most recent games against them, I would say things have been pretty clean which is why I don't quite get what happened on Saturday. When you're winning by that large of a margin there is no reason not to play cleanly. Now I wasn't on the field so maybe there is stuff that I don't know about but that's how I see it.

Regardless of that loss, we're going to Sweet 16s! Yay! The team has been working really hard this past week. We're playing Texas A&M so that should be interesting.

On another note, Goff seems to think that we don't belong at Sweet 16s. To this I say, we earned our spot. We won the game that we needed to win. We have no control over the seeding. Whether or not it was "fair" to one team or another, we did what we had to do to get to nationals and I'm damn proud of my team for doing that. As for Goff's pet team, BYU, I don't think there is enough information yet to make a good judgement on them. They lost to Stanford and then won against Reno. Neither of those results are all that ground breaking. No, they did not lose to Stanford by all that big of a margin but neither did we when we played them in league. Truth is, Stanford is still good but not the team they've been the past couple of years. As for beating Reno, I saw a bit of the game and while I liked that BYU was flexible on offense, nothing that they were doing was all that remarkable. They look like another good, solid team. No more and no less. They don't deserve to be 8th in the seedings for regional playoffs but until they play a league season against competitive teams I don't think they should be touted as one of the best teams around as Goff does.

Two games, Two losses

We played UC Davis on Treasure Island last weekend and lost hard. The final score was 20-5. Thankfully we did score one try but, after how well the team had been playing, it was still a disappointment. We just couldn't seem to get any momentum going. There would be a good individual effort but then we would lose the ball. It didn't help that there were some questionable calls made and that the Davis pack couldn't seem to stay on their feet in the scrum. I've never understood the point of diving on the engage. It's incredibly painful to hit the ground face first and there's a huge risk of injury. If a player can't scrum, don't have them in the tight five. It's common sense. At the end of the day though, we just didn't play our game and Davis took full adventage of that.

Yesterday against Stanford was a whole different story. We still lost but the final score was 19-10. We played well and we played together. The ref kept a tight game but I think that helped us, to be honest. Both sides had plenty of penalties called on them but I think we dealt with it better. Of course it would have been nice to get another win but considering that Stanford just recently beat Chico by a spread of 20 some odd points, I'm pretty proud of our team.

Bringing things up to speed...

It's been a long time since I last updated. In that span of time we had our clinic with UCSC, had Double Days, played in the Stanford Invitational, beat UN Reno in our first league match, and had a scrimmage with Stanford. Needless to say, it's been a busy month or so.

We kicked off Double Days with the clinic and game against UCSC. We lost. We got better as the game went on but in the end we still lost. A week later though, it was a whole 'nother story. We came in second at the Stanford Invitational, losing in the final game to Stanford. It was definitely a confidence builder to see the team come together and beat some pretty good sides. Then we went to Reno for the first game of the season. We won by a nice margin but Reno put up one hell of a fight. They played down a couple of players almost the entire game so their efforts were pretty impressive. They might not have numbers but they do have heart. Finally, this past Saturday, we played a Stanford mostly B side. We lost but not too badly and some of our key players weren't on the field. But guess what?! I played! It was only for about 10 minutes because I was still recovering from the lovely 103.7 degree fever I had a few days before and because I managed to sprain my ankle but still! I was pleased and it felt good to be back after over a year.

This weekend is our game against UC Davis. We'll be playing on Treasure Island and hopefully the good weather will holdout. TI in the rain and wind is no fun.

Sweet!

It looks like Sweet 16s will be New Mexico and then Final Fours will be at Stanford again. I like that all the teams will be together for Sweet 16s, not split into 2 places like in the past few years. I always thought that was a bit odd. Hopefully, the fields in New Mexico will be full sized. The ones in Florida were so short that you could make penalty kicks from the half. Bit ridiculous. This whole thing does seem a bit unfair to the teams on the East Coast but its a pretty sweet deal for us. Not having to include a possible trip to Florida in our budget will make things so much easier, especially if we're going to Canada over Spring Break like I hope we are.

Hesitation...

I leave Brazil on Saturday. Double days are in January and then it's straight into league season. I'm going back to rugby. I know I'm going back but every once in awhile I have to wonder if it's wise for me to continue playing or at least to attempt to play this coming semester.

I tore my ACL back in January and had surgery in March. It's been about 7 months, a reasonably long enough time that my playing rugby again isn't an absolutely insane idea. The catch is that those 7 months have not been filled with dedicated rahab. I was moderately good about it over the summer but once I got here rehab was pushed down the priority list. There was a language barrior to overcome, a new city to explore, creepy men to avoid, a family to live with, and new people to make friends with. It doesn't help that there is not a patch of grass in Salvador and the cobblestone sidewalks are definitely a no go for running with a post ACL surgery knee. I've jogged a few times on a treadmill but nothing too serious or all that regular. I just wonder if I'm setting myself for a retorn ACL. I don't think I can put into words just how that would suck. Going through it once was okay, not terrible, not great and I dealt with it. Going through it again would just be frustrating, maddening, heartbreaking, and a myriad of other not so positive adjetives.

This is of course all hinging on the assumption that my PT will clear me. I haven't seen her in months so I have no clue what she'll say. It's not as if the knee is bad. Daily walking is fine and I know it's a lot better now than it was when I first arrived but I still get twinges every now and then. Plus, I'm fairly certain I'm still a wee bit gimpy looking when I run at higher speeds. Again, I haven't really been able to test that out here. I guess I'll just have to wait and see but I've never been a very patient person.

Just my luck...

The Rugby World Cup is happening in France but I'm in the ONE country outside of the US that isn't crazy about rugby! It's not like rugby isn't in South America. Argentina is in the quarterfinals! But Brazil is too damn good at soccer to care about rugby. Argh!

And in other non-rugby but oh-so-exciting news, Cal is #2 in the nation for football. Of course it has to happen during the season that I decide to go abroad.

Bad timing. Boo.

Complete change of subject but I found a site with really good rugby videos. It's called rugbydump.com. Granted it only covers the men's game but that lack of good judgement can be overlooked for the sake of quality videos of trys, tackles and other fun stuff all in one spot.

In Brasil...

I'm going to be pretty silent this semester because well, it's kinda hard to report on team doings when you're not even in the country. I'm studying in Brasil this semester and it's amazing but I do miss rugby and my rugby girls. There was a poster for men's rugby in the airport but that's the only evidence I've seen of the sport in this country. Here it's basically soccer, soccer, and more soccer.

Next year hopefully...

Several of my teammates went to the Alex Williams Rugby Camp. From everything they said it sounded like the camp was pretty amazing. They were exhausted and sunburnt but I think they learned a lot. I mean what's not to appreciate about one-on-one tutoring from Kathy Flores, Laura Cabrera, Ashley English, and other Eagle players. I'm hoping that the camp becomes an annual thing and that maybe I can attend next summer.

I'm cleared to jog!

:D

Hey! That's us!

Goff just posted Plenty to Play for in U23 Tier B, an article about the U23 NASC. The article mentions a Chico player and features a picture of her in a game. The team she's playing against is us. For some reason I find this amusing. It's always fun to read an article and see the name of someone I know or a picture. It might be even funnier since our presence in the picture is inadvertent. I can even make out which teammates are in it.

It's amazing how rapidly my knee is healing. I am extremely impatient but when I sit back and think about it, it really does amaze me. It's been a little under 3 months since my surgery and my knee has stopped being something that I constantly think about. I don't have quite the same extension as I once did but considering that my knees naturally hyperextended to the extreme that's not necessarily a bad thing. Now I'm just a couple of degrees hyperextended instead of 5 or 6 degrees. My flexion is also much improved. While I still can't kneal down on my knees I can now sit crosslegged with no difficulty. Most importantly the limp is entirely gone when I walk and I'm back to my normal movement. I'm really hoping that the next time I have PT that I'll be cleared to jog. I tested it out the other day (told you I'm impatient) and it wasn't too bad. I could definitely feel my knee and it felt like I was favoring it a bit but besides a little soreness the next day, my knee wasn't really that grumpy. It didn't buckle or spasm like I was afraid it would. Plus, I'm also not sure if I was jogging differently because of my knee or if it had been so long that I didn't remember what it felt like to move at a speed faster than a snail's pace. Sadly, that little jog made me pretty sore. My lower half isn't used to exercise anymore. Getting back into rugby shape is going to be interesting.

Excuse me?!

I know that some other blogs have covered this already but it annoyed me enough to post about it too. College Rugby America is a website that claims to be "the official site of Women's College Rugby." On the righthand side of the page is an announcement saying that "the nation's first college women's rugby game will be played this fall." Drop the act. Yes, you can go on and on about the linguistic technicalities of "varsity rugby," "college rugby," "college club rugby," and all the other possible combinations but in the end it's all a bunch of BS. I play college rugby. When I step on the field my jersey says Cal on it. We, the other teams in our league, and the teams across the nation who compete to be at nationals all play college rugby. Don't you dare take away from the commitment we have for this sport. Someday, I hope, there will be NCAA women's rugby but that day isn't here yet, so for now we are college rugby. Plus, I'm a little confused. Are you the home of women's college rugby or the EIU women's rugby page under a different name? I'm sure EIU has some great athletes but they don't have the only ruggers who exemplify "courage, character, accountability, integrity and sportsmanship" while maintaining a 3.0 or above GPA. And you can applaud your so-called record breaking winning season all you want but until you play against the best (Penn State, Stanford, Army, Chico, etc.) your program cannot claim to be the best.

More could be said but not anything fit for a PG movie. Plus, I think my coach checks in on me every once in awhile. *waves* Oh and on that note, I was recently informed that my blog came up in a conversation during Grizzlies a weekend ago. *waves again* I'm still surprised people read this but thanks.

Interesting Links

Alex Williams, assistant coach to the All Blues and former Eagle, is starting a women's rugby camp this summer.
www.williamsrugbycamps.com
It's a three day affair and some elite players are going to be coaching. Looks like a great opportunity for anyone trying to up their game.

Article from SF Chronicle titled Stanford women ready to rumble says "Cal's women's team is nothing special." Yes, I know we don't have the million titles that the men's team does but still, that's a bit harsh.

Final Fours 2007

Final Fours were this past Friday and Saturday. Friday had the semifinals for the DI men and women. The first game was Stanford vs. Davis and unsurprisingly Stanford won easily. Stanford just played their game and Davis simply wasn't able to do much about it. Then it was Penn State vs. New Mexico. New Mexico had heart and put up a fight but Penn State stayed focused and the exploited any mistake that New Mexico made. After the women's semifinals were the men's games with Cal vs. Navy and BYU vs. Penn State. Cal and BYU both won. Cal made it clear fairly early on that they were going to win. BYU did not. At the half it looked like it could go either way and it was a really messy game. Both sides were dropping the ball, knocking it on, and doing other random stuff. In the end though BYU pulled it out and so we ended with the same lineup for the DI championship games as last year.

Saturday were the championship games for DI and DII men and women. I wasn't able to see the DII games but I do know that Iowa won the women's game. Condolences to UCSC. Not that 2nd place in the nation is something to be ashamed of. After the DII games was the Stanford vs. Penn State game. The final score was 21-22 with Penn State barely winning. The score does not reflect the game very accurately. Penn State killed Stanford for most of the game and then at the very end they just fell off and let Stanford score again and again. I'm not sure what happened. Maybe the subs weren't able to play at the same level as the starters or maybe Penn State thought they had it in the bag and could relax. I'm not sure but they almost let Stanford take it away from them just like last year. The only thing that saved them was the clock. For the first 65 minutes of the game, Penn State was very impressive. Their forwards were disciplined and their whole team played amazing defense. There were some amazing tackles. Penn State layed out a Stanford flanker on multiple kickoffs right in front of us. Plus, Penn State's fullback is damn good. Their entire back three were fast but you could tell that she was the brains behind the operation. After the women's game, was the men's championship game which Cal took easily. The first score came only a minute and half into the game and they just kept coming. I expected more of a showing from BYU but Cal was able to keep them from doing much of anything the entire game. So Cal is the champion for what seems like the 100th time.

Just a small sidenote but how impressive is it that Penn State had both teams in the Final Fours? Wouldn't it be cool to win it the same year? I believe one school has done it before.

WTF?!

Final Fours are in a week and the line up for D1 women's is interesting. Stanford is there, of course. Penn State too. The two surprises are New Mexico and Davis. I hadn't heard much about New Mexico before now but congrats to them. As for Davis, my feelings are mixed.

I have too many things to say to make a coherent paragraph so I'm just going to list.

1. I'm bitter. Yes, Davis beat us fair and square. However, they got a much easier path to Final Fours than we did last year. We played Air Force, the West #1, on the first day and if we had won we would have played another military school. Davis got to play Virginia and UNI. I'm not saying those were easy games but I don't think it quite holds up to two military schools.
2. If any team from our league besides Stanford deserves to be in Final Fours it's Chico. They're better than Davis but their pool was ridiculous. It had three teams ranked #1 in their league, including Penn State who has been in the final game the past two years, and then Chico who is #2 in PCRFU. How is that fair?
3. PCRFU should have 4 spots in Sweet 16s. Stanford and Chico are consistently two of the top teams in the country. We're good and Davis has proven themselves up to par too. Take seeds away from the South. Why do they have two seeds? They got killed last year and they got killed this year.
4. Why does SoCal only have 1 seed? Again, the South has two. Are you really telling me that the South has better teams than UCSB and UCSD?
5. I don't mean to totally bash on the South but their results both last year and this year demonstrate that their league is just not up there with the rest of the leagues. Every league had at least 1 team advance to the Elite 8 except SoCal and the South. Fold the South into a different league or make them DII. Maybe in a few years they'll be able to compete with the best but right now, they're not cutting it.
6. On Friday, it's going to be Stanford vs. Davis. For the first time in my life I might just root for Stanford.

Good luck to everyone! Yes, even Davis. May the best team win.

Not the ending we wanted...

Pacific Coast playoffs were this weekend. We played OSU on Saturday and won by an good margin. We came out hard, scored first and kept scoring. There were some things that needed to be tweaked at half time but overall it was a good game.

Sunday was our game against Davis and it was an agonizing game to watch. We played hard and with a lot of heart but we just couldn't get anything going. There were good individual moments but we couldn't string them enough of them together to result in points. We did score at the very end which was good but this game was a heartbreaking end to our run.

This has been a difficult season and in some ways I'm relieved that it's over. It's just been a bit emotionally draining, for me at least and I think for other people on the team as well. We still had some beautiful moments. The fall was great with a fun bunch of rookies and we did well at Stanford 10s and Scrum by the Sea. The league season also went well. We got off to a slow start against Stanford and Chico but we improved and beat Humboldt, Davis, and Reno. So it's not like this year has been dismal but it wasn't the glory season that we thought it could have been. We had so many amazing returning players and after our successes from last year, all the vets and especially the seniors had high hopes coming into this year. Injuries really took their toll though. We had broken bones, concussions, and torn ligaments. We've already had three players have surgery this year and there are several who are looking at possible surgery this summer. The injuries took several of our star players out of contention and just made it hard to have a consistent lineup.

I simply can't believe it's over. The entire team is in a bit of a daze. I don't even want to imagine the rugby team without the seniors. I'm really going to miss them.

Here's to a great year despite the ending. Here's to a well deserved break. And here's to coming back bigger and better than ever next year!

Davis, you better do something with this opportunity. Soak it up because next year, Sweet 16s are ours!

Wish us luck!

Because playoffs are this weekend! I admit that I'm nervous. We've been looking good in practice but we're really gonna have to bring it.

Besides our own games, I'm really excited to watch the Chico/Stanford match. Chico has the momentum but I'm sure Stanford would love nothing more than to take back the number 1 spot.

In other news, I'm off crutches! Actually I've been off them for about a week. I walk with a bit of a limp but my range of motion is good and my knee is relatively pain free. I think my doctor may have a slightly unorthodox approach. I just saw my physical therapist for the first time and she about had a heart attack when she realized that I wasn't wearing a brace. I've gotta admit I'm glad my doctor is this aggressive. My leg has already atrophied some. I can't imagine what it would have looked like if I'd worn a brace for a month.

Cal vs. All Blues

It's amazing how differently a team can play on any given day. The caliber of play this past Thurs. night against the All Blues was so much higher than when we played St. Mary's. We lost but we pressured them like mad and we even scored. There were some amazing individual moments. There were great punches, good decision making, and one of our girls juked Laura Cabrera...TWICE. We also played well together. Something clicked and it just looked smooth. Plus, no injuries!

This game gave me a lot more confidence going into playoffs. I have been worried about numbers and how we would deal with having some of our regulars in the gimp club but this game showed that we can still play with the best of them. Spring break will give everyone a breather and then hopefully we'll come back ready to crank it out.

I had my surgery Tues. and it went well. It wasn't the 3 day misery that I thought it would be. In fact the worst pain was in my back from having to lie with my leg up for so long. I'm on crutches but I can already put some weight on it and the swelling has gone down some. Now if only I could get all the yellow streaks from the iodine off.

I'm not a big fan of the new erugbynews.com. I liked the simple layout of Goff.