The Bishop’s Cup was introduced in 2007 as an expression of common bonds between St. Thomas High School (Houston) and the Jesuit Dallas rugby programs.
On Feb. 28, 2014, Jesuit took on St. Thomas in the Bishop’s Cup for the eighth straight year. Both games were incredibly entertaining; however, only the JV team pulled out a victory. The final score of the JV game was 26-10 while Varisty lost 43-10.
So what went wrong for the Varsity squad? Varsity Rugby captain, Manny Salazar ’14 explains, “We had one of our best training sessions that week leading up to our game against St. Thomas. Our team really started strong in the beginning, but we were unable to finish the game as a team.”
Mr. Austin Ryan, English teacher and head JV and backs coach, explained the loss: “Unfortunately, when you play good teams and make mistakes, they capitalize. That is what us from St. Thomas. They made fewer mistakes than we did. Yet, even when the score started to get out of hand, our boys kept fighting and put a try in late to spark some resolve. Credit to them to finish strong.”
Despite the loss, they learned many things that can help them grow as a team and make less mistakes next time around. Salazar explained, “This week we have been working on some drills that are helping us improve as a team on the pitch.” And even with defeat came a great effort. Some of the standout players from the varsity squad pointed out by Coach Austin Ryan were Mark Vache ’15 and Salazar, who even in great defeat tried their hardest and impacted others around them through doing so.
On the other hand the JV squad had a fantastic game against a fantastic team. Coach Ryan briefly describes their efforts, “A truly cohesive, team-oriented game. Every phase of Rugby was done as a team prepared in training, our best performance yet!” Everything went exactly to plan and played almost perfectly, with no costly mistakes being made.
At the moment, Jesuit is taking place in the Jesuit Showdown against seven other teams and during spring break Varsity will travel to California to play two other Jesuit schools. This game against St. Thomas was very beneficial for both Varsity and JV. It has helped them become better teammates and showed them that they need to keep fighting and try their hardest no matter what the score is.
Coach Ryan tells us how they learn from games like this, “JV and Varsity have worked hard to take ownership of their play. They need to apply what they learn in training authentically in order to succeed. That’s why we call rugby games “tests,” because it’s just like school. We as coaches prepare our players, and they execute what they learned.”
Despite the loss to St. Thomas, this year looks like it is going to be another great one for the Jesuit Rugby team.
Photography by Kelly Madonna
