Rugby has had many exciting matches over Spring Break and up until now as well. After starting off the break with an impressive 4th place finish at the 15th annual Jesuit Rugby showdown, the team had to travel all the way to San Jose, CA to take on the country’s #1 side that is Jesuit High School from Sacramento, CA. However it was not all about the rugby this break. During the time off, the whole team visited the Second Harvest Food Pantry warehouse to do a bit of community service. All of this activity left the team with very little down time. And as if all that wasn’t enough work for the team, they still have three weeks left in the season. During this time, they will be playing two key matches against HEB (the club team of Trinity Euless and L.D. Bell students) and Plano School Rugby.
After landing in San Jose and grabbing a bite to eat, the team had a quick practice session at Bellarmine College Prep’s field, a school that they would play against later that week, and then they visited Santa Clara University. After the tour, the boys returned to BCP and met their host families. That afternoon, the team played BCP and found themselves down 24-0 at the half. The team fought hard through to the final whistle but only to come up short, 31-26. Despite this loss, Head Varsity Coach Anthony Mattacchione says, “It was a well spirited match, and [it was] fun hanging out with Jesuit brothers from another school.”
Mid-week, the squad went to the Second Harvest Food Pantry warehouse and continued their hard work off the pitch. In about three straight hours of work, they managed to sort out 8500lbs of carrots into 325 (25lbs) boxes!
However, this was nothing compared to the work they were about to put in against the country’s #1 side Jesuit Sacramento. Once they reached Sacramento, the boys had one more training session before finally taking on this amazing team on the last day of their wondrous trip. Coach Mattaccione describes the boys reaction upon arrival: “The boys were in total awe the outdoor pool and field space.” Jesuit Sacramento has 140 students in their rugby program and had set up each of their three varsity sides to play about 20 minutes versus the Rangers. It was an eye opener in terms of depth and skills. The Rangers held their own and were playing in their 5th game in 6 days without the luxury of a fresh team every 20 minutes. The boys lost a tough one by a score of 71-15 to Jesuit Sacramento.
After the extremely busy spring break, the squad had to immediately come back and play two extremely good teams. First they took on Alliance in what Coach Mattacchione describes as “their best game all season.” Soon after that fantastic victory, they were forced to play Lake Travis with only 29 players due to injuries and lost both games due to mistakes that were reflective of the players missing at starting positions. However, the season is not over yet, and Jesuit still has to play two more very big match ups, HEB and Plano School Rugby.
So overall, even though Jesuit had some tough losses over this extremely busy break they also had some commendable victories on and off the field. This was certainly a spring break to be proud of.
