Running of the Bulls
Sean Carson
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The Bulls Rugby club learned something this season: The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
The Bulls have a record this season of 6-1 against the Big 12 conference including a 56-0 win against the University of Kansas (Lawrence) and a 51-7 win against the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The lone blemish on their record against the Big 12 came against Iowa State University (Ames), whom they had already beaten earlier in the season, during the Heart of America Collegiate Tournament championship match. They were playing their third game in two days and lost 41-6.
Vice team captain senior Luke Walczewski said he thinks the success is partly because of coaching.
"We have a good, good coach," Walczewski said. "Bill [Sexton] is a really great coach. Before he came along in the early '90s or late '80s, our team wasn't very good."
Walczewski also said success doesn't come through better athletes, but rather, it comes through better execution.
"We practice consistently now," Walczewski said. "We just have more of a program now than anyone else has."
Team captain senior Joe Donley said he agrees that good coaching is a key to the team's success.
"Getting on the field, pound for pound we are outmatched, but it comes down to good coaching [and] player discipline," Donley said. "We practice three times a week, conditioning after practice."
Sexton said the team has played well against the Big 12 since the early 1990s.
"We like that we're the small fish in the big pond," Sexton said.
Walczewski said the Big 12 teams are basically the only collegiate teams in the area that really give the Bulls any real competition.
Walczewski said all the other small schools in the area don't really have programs.
"We're always looking to get tougher competition," Walczewski said. "We could set ourselves up with all these worthless teams, [but] we would have no gauge of how good we are as a team relative to actual competition."
Sexton points out that the team hasn't just played well against Big 12 opponents, the team also plays well against other major collegiate rugby clubs. Sexton said the Bulls made it to the elite eight of the USA Rugby Collegiate Tournament in 1997, 1998, and 1999.
In 1997, the Bulls beat the U.S. Military Academy (West Point, N.Y.) in the Sweet 16 then lost to Stanford University (Palo Alto, Calif.) in the next round.
In 1998, they beat Central Washington University (Ellensburg) before falling to the Indiana University (Bloomington) in the final eight, and in 1999, they beat the University of Connecticut (Storrs) in the Sweet Sixteen, and before losing to the Naval Academy (Annapolis, Md.).
Sexton also said that in March 1999, the Bulls traveled to California where they played against the perennial collegiate powerhouse, University of California-Berkeley. Sexton said the team played well against the team despite losing 73-0.
Berkeley has won each of the USA Rugby Tournaments for well over the past 10 years, and Walczewski said, nobody ever plays them close.
"Basically the whole tournament is just to see who gets the honor to be creamed by Berkeley," Walczewski said. "They're always the best."
Walczewski sai Berkeley is the only team in the nation that gives out school-sponsored scholarships. The Bulls, however, gave out their first scholarship this year. It came from the club's endowment instead of something from the school.
Walczewski said Sexton has been going to high school rugby tournaments in Kansas City, Mo. and St. Louis for quite some time trying to recruit some players to come to Truman and play rugby, and he thinks that helps the team a lot.
"A lot of these guys who have played before and have experience, you can't really put a value on it," Walczewski said. "They make the team so much better."
This weekend, the Bulls hope to continue dominanace of the Big Twelve when they have a rematch against Kansas, and they hope to repeat the dominance they had against them earlier in the season.
"They're going to have some players back that they didn't have last time," Walczewski said. "They have their fly-half who was injured, and I think he'll be back, and he's an exceptional player."