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!