With every new sports season, all eyes fixate on the reigning champion: the one who proved their might last year, the one who strives to continue their success, the one who has the most to prove. This year, however, The Jesuit Dallas Rugby Team was “that team.”
Coming off of a storied season resulting in a State Championship title, the pressure was on to see if the Rangers could pick up where they left off in 2015.
To little surprise, the Rangers took no prisoners and reinstated their dominance in league play.
On Saturday, January 30th, The Dallas Jesuit Varsity Rugby Team began their season with a dominant shutout win against the Shreveport High School Area Rugby Club. Posting 72 points in the match, the Rangers worked efficiently and effectively on defense and on offense.
Before the season, the Rangers utilized this valuable time to train for their first opponents of the season. An emerging staple of the program, the Rangers hosted their annual Bootcamp, a two-week training program designed to prepare players for the long season ahead. Head Coach Anthony Mattacchione says that, “Our bootcamp serves many purposes like as a team building exercise, and it helps us to gauge where some of our younger players are at in their knowledge and development as players. This helps us in making key decisions if we need to bring them up to Varsity to fill in during key matches for injuries to starters/reserves.” With so much flexibility to the team, Mattacchione said that by “bringing up a few players who have never played at the varsity level [to give] us a look at what we need to work on and develop at every level of our program in order to make transitions from lesser grade sides (JV to Varsity) seamless.”
“All the hours we’ve spent practicing this year contributed to our success this weekend,” says Senior Christian Schoeberl, Team Captain and Flanker/Center for the team. “We have a lot of fourth-year seniors who were amped for the first game of the season, and that experience helped us this weekend.” With more than half of the squad being veteran members, the Ranger team was packed full of experience that led to their decisive victory. With this many veterans to guide the team, Mattacchione “[feels] that our players’ experience and knowledge of each other benefited our team over a newer side which has less game experience.” Additionally, he feels that “our program and methodology of play helped us predict some of our own outcomes and defend/counter the pattern on play of the other team.”
With strategy playing a large role in the game, the Rangers tapped into the skill that complimented their experience as well. Man of the Match, Tim Jonas ’16 noted that “The factors that helped us win the game were really just our experience and skill level overall. The team we played was very new, very green to the sport, and they did not have the organization offensively or defensively to deal with our game plan.” On this note, Schoeberl added that “Our seniors stepped up this weekend, 12 of our starting 15 are seniors and the chemistry between us helped us perform for the game. The new guys stepped as well as they were eager to prove themselves at the varsity level.”
With every game, the team learns more and grows stronger. Regarding areas for improvement, Jonas saw that, “We need to continue to work on our communication and fitness for next week and the entire season. Those are 2 fundamental elements of rugby which allows a team like ours to compete at a high level.” Specifically, Coach Matta thought that, “When we evaluated film and broke down our game stats, we looked at our weaknesses [and] saw many errors in judgment involving poor communication or a lack of field vision. These are key areas we are working on this week in training. What they did [really] well is support each other to apply pressure on defense that created turnovers for us.”
The Rangers will start a three-game homestand on Friday against Alliance at 7:30. Coach Matta added that “We’d love for everyone to come out and support us this week. We play our annual Scrum for a Cure to Cancer match Friday night. We are raising funds for Micaela’s Army Foundation in support of the Children’s Oncology ward at Children’s Hospital of Dallas. The Jesuit Rugby member who collects the most donations gets to cut my hair on World Cancer day this Thursday.”
Whether it’s to watch another dominant display of rugby or to donate to a worthy cause, make sure to come out and support your Jesuit Rangers in their next game!
