We want videos!

Wendy Young | November 28, 2007, 1:01 am

We want videos!

&nbsp This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

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Another Post about the West...

Wendy Young | November 28, 2007, 1:00 am

Another Post about the West…

The teams in the West are currently looking over the current league system and if it is beneficial or detrimental to teams &amp competition in the West. My post earlier this month talked about several topics including the geography of the West and about the costs of playing in the West. These two issues combined are hurting players, coaches and teams beyond measure.



Current talks now between teams are revolving about maybe moving back to the Best of the West Tournament, an East/West or South/North format, or a Tier 1 and Tier 2 situation or maybe a few other ideas.

The pros are that each team has 6 high level games that they are required and &quotget to&quot play. We are bolstering the competition in the West and helping ourselves grow as a result.



The cons of this format: Teams have 3 home games and 3 away games in a year. These are required league matches and almost all require a plane ticket. The Colorado teams are the lucky ones here as they have three teams within driving distance of each other. Austin has the worst case scenario here (and not just because I play for them) but because we are geographically the farthest away from the rest of the teams in the league. It is literally impossible for us not to purchase a plane ticket to play a different team in our league. (Buy a plane ticket or miss a day of work bc we have to drive 10 hours or more.)

This is basically a tournament where each team works to beat all the other teams. I believe there is some seeding that happens to predetermine your standings for the tournament (I have only played in one of these tournaments).



This tournament style can have its problems though, as it all depends on your team that one day. In the league format you have several chances to prove yourself, at the Best of the West Tournament you lose, you are out.

This topic has been discussed mostly because it is a similar format to what a lot of men’s teams do. Basically you draw a line down the middle or across the horizon and each region plays the teams in its region. However this format greatly benefits Colorado again because they would just have to dominate Black Ice and Boulder…who are currently ranked the lowest in the West League. Either way we try to split up the league it doesn’t seem fair and it always benefits one team or another.

This idea came across the email this morning…and has some potential in my mind. Basically we would go off the current rankings so:



Tier 1

1) Glendale

2) Jazz

3) Sabres



Tier 2

4) Austin

5) Black Ice

6) Boulder



Tier 1 would play the teams within and would fight for the right to represent the West (right now we have 2 seeds, but both seeds will be challenged in 2008). Tier 2 would fight amongst itself to be #1, as the #1 in Tier 2 would move up and the #3 in Tier 1 would drop down. Almost identical to the current National All Star Championships that we have every summer.



A few new ideas were introduced as well, could the #1 Tier 2 team challenge a team in Tier 1 for their spot? Also, how would the D2 teams fit into the mix (the West is working on sending a team to the D2 tournametn in 2008)? Could they challenge the lowest ranked team? There were several other ideas, but these two were of greatest concern to me.



If the West was to adopt this new format, does that mean that Austin, Black Ice and Boulder areut of luck from the 2008 Round of 16? Or do the Sabres drop down and Austin moves up? Then the bottom 3 teams have no chance at Round of 16?

Please leave thoughts in the comments, as I believe we are all open to new ideas and thoughts…



So in summary of all these ideas, there are more questions than there are answers. I just know that the current league system is costing teams more money and is stretching our team officers, players and budget. I think that all this talk is good, and I hope we can all come together to agree on a solution that builds the West up and the teams in it.

This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Texas Youth Rugby Association

Wendy Young | November 13, 2007, 12:40 am

Texas Youth Rugby Association

Girls Rugby has arrived in TEXAS! This weekend (11-3-2007) Traci and I from Austin and Alena and Leslie from Houston traveled to Dallas to do a girls youth clinic. The event was held at Jesuit High School which has THREE boy’s high school teams and you can take rugby as a course!!!

These boys don’t even know how lucky they are, state of the art facilities to practice at (TURF STADIUM) a coaching staff and playing rugby counts towards their GPA. How freaking awesome is that? So we are trying to slowly start the same thing in Dallas, Austin and Houston.

We had about 12 girls at the clinic and we had them from 9am to 3pm. We started them out easy in the morning with a small sharks and minnow game of touch. After they tagged someone they had to hold hands and start working together to get the rest of the girls. Then we moved into a stretching and dynamic warm up with all the girls. They did well and were excited to be doing something besides static stretching I think.

Then we moved onto pop passing, posting and picking the ball and even ball lines! These girls were like sponges, they soaked up everything we said! After each session we tried to do a question and answer and they were able to answer every question and it was just amazing. Before lunch we decided to get tackling out of the way. We were all a little worried that they would be afraid to this, but they jumped right in! We started on our knees and talked about proper placement of your face, neck, hands shoulders etc. They loved watching us tackle each other and kept asking us to do it again and again.

Then we moved to tackling a tackling bag and they did very well! They were hesitant to use their hands though and we kept emphasizing how important hands are in a tackle. After they mastered the bag I got in a tackle suit and let the girls hit me a couple of time each. We also changed the tackling bag to a rucking pad as they were just hitting and bouncing off me now. We noticed again that they were not using their hands so we introduced the rucking pad so they could grab a leg or shorts or whatever they wanted. Overall I was very satisfied by the tackling progress they made and some of those girls could hit hard!

Then we broke for lunch and had some chatting times with the girls. They were very cute and giggly and were very excited to be learning rugby! They wanted to scrimmage (full on tackle) so badly, but we just didn’t feel safe yet. We still had plenty of rugby to cover, so we decided that if they did well we would do a touch session at the end of the day.

After lunch we worked on scrums and line outs with the girls. We again thought they would be adverse to the &quottouching&quot that comes with scrumming and rugby. But those girls dove right in and were giving each other their waistbands and scrumming it up! We were able to put together a full scrum and they even drove the scrum machine a bit! The lineout session was really cute as the girls don’t have very much upper body strength yet. Alena and Traci tried to choose the smallest girls for lifting and taught everyone how to lift. At the end they lifted each girl so they could feel what it felt like to be lifted properly. It was very cute!

Next we worked on more ball lines with switches (they picked it up FAST!), looping and crashes. Everything we did was oriented to be a pop pass as we did not think teaching a spin pass would be good on the first day. This is more of an advanced skill and can take some players years to develop. From there we moved to a quick defensive drill, drumming into their heads that rugby defense is together, flat and harder than it looks. This was a short drill as we were running out of time, so we quickly did that and then we moved into the touch drill.

We knew the touch game would be hard to do, so we decided to make it as simple as possible. Alena and I played scrumhalves for the teams after we had split them up and strictly held ourselves to directing and not trying to show off! We had several stoppages over the hour we played touch, some for directions, some for questions…and some for stopping dangerous play.

The touch quickly improved as we introduced more concepts and encouraged them to take the tag and to move quickly into position. They had problems with aligning correctly and at the right distance, so we made sure to encourage those that were doing it right.

The clinic was a huge success and the girls were very cute at the end because they did a cheer for us! Union Rugby and the Rugby Foundation had donated balls, so each girl was able to take a rugby ball and a tshirt home! How exciting!

Traci and I are looking forward to hosting our clinic in Austin on Dec 1st and helping Alena &amp Leslie with their clinic in Houston on Dec. 15. Stay tuned for flyers, details etc on those camps.

For more information please email the us @ girlsrugbytx@gmail.com.

This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Geography of USA Rugby Women’s Rugby D1 Teams

Wendy Young | November 7, 2007, 10:07 pm

Geography of USA Rugby Women&rsquos Rugby D1 Teams

A reader of this post had asked for an updated map with color coding for all the teams, and I think I have gotten it right. Let me know if I didn’t because I did it really fast and may have made a mistake!

Also if you are interested, the map is &quotlive&quot at Google Maps here. Some of the place markers are not on their specific location because otherwise some of them were stacked. They are spread outs o you can see them better.

**Thanks for all the comments my rugger friends, looks like I may have it all cleared up now! Is Keystone really in the Northeast and not Marfu? Weird…



This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

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Google Your Name & Rugby - Wendy Young Rugby

Wendy Young | November 7, 2007, 10:05 pm

Google Your Name &amp Rugby – Wendy Young Rugby

So I was bored at work today, so I decided to Google my name. That didn’t bring up much exciting things, so I added rugby on the end of my name – Wendy Young rugby.

I found some interesting results:

1) Your Scrumhalf Connection, my blog is listed of course!

2) USA Rugby – I’m in the pool! The USA Rugby Women’s National Team Pool that is! I’ve known that I was in the pool since June 2007, but its just nice to see your name in print!

USA Rugby Women’s National Team Pool

Not sure if you have read Goff either, but they are estimating the cost of the England Tour to be around $1500 bucks a player. This is a huge cost, but who can say no to a tour with the Eagles? I am a reserve, so no traveling for me unless someone gets hurt.

Stay healthy all you scrumhalfs, but just know that I will have my bag packed and ready to go in a heartbeat if you get hurt…but really, please stay healthy, I would never wish ill on you…

3) Womeneagles.com – has the rosters from the NA4 tournament where I played against Canada.

4) Austin Valkyries – My current rugby club.

5) Rugby Canada – Match report from one the NA4 games.

6) Strr.net – Society of Texas Rugby Referees, one of my match reports for refereeing.

7) and there is even more, but I am sure you are bored of it by now.

Sometimes the internet can be incredibly helpful, but these days we are almost chronicling our lives because of the internet. Google is amazing…but its scary what you can find!

This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Thoughts Revolving Around Round of 16

Wendy Young | November 3, 2007, 3:17 am

Thoughts Revolving Around Round of 16

So I have several trains of thought today about rugby, West rugby and Round of 16. After the rather anti-climatic weekend for West rugby and all the teams involved, I really think we have to face facts. What are those facts?

1) West Region Geographically:



We are a HUGE union with a HUGE geographic challenge. Any D1 team in the West that wants to play a highly competitive team (besides CO) has to drive over 6 hours or fly to a destination. I added up how much I spent on plane tickets and driving this year and it was well over $1000. This total does not include any out of state tournaments either, because we simply couldn’t afford to attend!

Yes, this is a challenge with living in the West…but should that challenge by shunned off just because we live in the West? I think not, and the solution is not to move to another territory although that option is tempting! I think we should stick by our union and work to improve it.

We can work on building a D2 program so that teams that aren’t ready to work towards D1 at least have a championship to play for, even if USA Rugby doesn’t recognize it. We also need to start working on building youth/high school in all parts of the West. Colorado has a good program going and Texas is just starting one…these programs will do all good things and most importantly will bring rugby to our cities.

2) Current D1 West League Schedule:I came to Austin right after the team’s had decided to do away with the Best of the West Tournament. I really think this was a good test to try out, but I think we have found that it has not helped at all. I believe one of the main ideas behind the switch was guaranteeing high level matches throughout the year and not having a tournament style. I really think this idea was thought out and implemented well, but the end result was not what was desired. Teams are spending twice as much money and traveling way more.

Where before a team may travel to Seattle, New York or across the country, now there are no funds to do any kind of traveling besides the league matches. I believe this is a detriment to our teams and I wish the league schedule would return to the Best of the West format.

3) Result of all This:So what is all this adding up to? The West will more than likely have two seeds challenged and will have one chance to challenge for a seed. If all goes well, we keep 3 seeds, if all hell breaks loose the West could end up without a seed. Not going to say it will happen, but lets keep an open mind here. The West is in some serious danger here, we could lose all our seeds and have to do something dramatic.

4) West Select SideSo we haven’t even touched on the NA4 schedule that is going to be a financial burden and more on the unions now. Basically if you haven’t heard (amazing how many teams haven’t heard…) USA Rugby is placing more emphasis on the Women’s National Team and the Territorial stuff leading up to it. They are doing away with the traditional ITT’s or All Stars Tournament and moving towards the NA4 [correction…duh I am an idiot…they are having ITT’s]. Check out these blogs from a few months ago for more details: NA4 Details &amp NASC to become NA4.

So the whole idea is that each territorial will have two &quothome&quot games (where is home exactly?) and one away game. These are set to happen in the Spring season and so most teams are assuming that League season should happen in the Fall season. The costs are tripling here if you aren’t counting…the finances for this are getting scary. If I did the math really quickly for me personally I am counting:



2-3 West D1 League games (away)

2 West Select Side games(home)

1 West Select Side game (away)

1NASC (away)

and if I go far enough…

1 NA4 Tournament

1-2 possible overseas tours while preparing for the Rugby World Cup

Scary stuff.

So those are the thoughts that are running through my head today…not very good stuff. I have been in the West Territory for almost 7 years now and it is becoming more and more daunting to play here.

This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Rugby Blogger Tshirt

Wendy Young | October 24, 2007, 12:41 am

Rugby Blogger Tshirt

So this morning I created the first (to my knowledge) Rugby Blogger Tshirt! The cool thing about the online service I am using is that YOU (meaning YOU!) can customize the tshirt. Meaning, you change change the color of the shirt, the actual words on the shirt and even the type of tshirt. Pretty sweet!

To customize your own Rugby Blogger tshirt visit here: Rugby Blogger Tshirt**Just click the gray customize button on the bottom right.

Check it out:

**The back of the tshirt has the logo from the top of my blog. See the zoomed in shot to the right of the tshirt.

This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!

Finally Fall Weather!

Wendy Young | October 24, 2007, 12:40 am

Finally Fall Weather!

So this morning I awoke to a very Harry Potter like day. You know the days that the book talks about where the wind is whipping everything about and the rain is relentless? A day where in the great hall, Dumbledore would have changed the sky to sunny and bright. Hey, by the way did you hear that Dumbeldore is gay? Who knew!

Anyways, loving the fallish weather and excited about carving pumpkins on Wednesday night! I know this may be hard to read for those of you that are experiencing snow and bitter cold, but it was in the fifties for the first time last night. I love this kind of weather and I love that it is the middle of October and we are just starting to get cold. LOVE IT!

So check out a few of the cooler pumpkin carvings…err pumpkin arrangements I found on the net:

Haha, after I had looked for a few pumpkin designs I liked, I came across this website: http://www.extremepumpkins.com. Very similar to Ace of Cakes (Extreme Cakes) on TLC where they light cakes on fire and reguarly have fireworks included. SWEETNESS!

This and more rugby blogs can be found at http://westrugby.blogspot.com. Thanks!