30th reunion of the 1989 Championship Team
Power point slides shown during the ceremonies: File:1989 USA Rugby Men's Collegiate National Champions final pdf.pdf
(Remarks by Coach Walt Daniels regarding the 1989 Men’s Collegiate Rugby National Champions)
Welcome to the 1989 Men’s Collegiate Rugby National Championship celebrity roast. And by the way, you guys are the celebrities. No, don’t worry, I’ll be nice. I want to take a jog down memory lane and relive some of the highlights of the ’89 season and some of the events that led up to our championship season. My involvement with Zoomie rugby began in 1986 when I was assigned to the Cadet Dental Clinic, also known by you guys as the Dental Hobby Shop. I knew that the Academy had a team and that it was a pretty good one, but that was the extent of my knowledge of Zoomie rugby. Little did I know that I had arrived in the middle of the Vern Francis Rugby Dynasty at the Academy. Beginning in ’86 in the next ten years, we made eight appearances in the final four. Shortly after I arrived at the Academy I started asking about the men’s rugby team. I found out that the coach was Lt Col Francis in the management department. I got the number and gave Vern a call. I explained who I was and my experience in playing the game and asked if he needed any help coaching. He said “why don’t you come down to practice today?” … and so it began. I hadn’t coached before and tried to learn as much as I could about coaching. I bought dozens of DVDs on coaching, watched international matches, read the USARFU manual from cover to cover, and went to coaching clinics. In the following year we lost to San Diego state in the final four by one point, finishing second. And in ’88 we got knocked off by Cal in the first round and finished third. At about this time I began to wonder if I was really up to the task and had enough to offer to get us just a little better so that we could not just show up at the final four, but to win it. I started looking at the classified ads in Rugby and contacted a coach in New Zealand who was willing to take a paid coaching position at the Academy. I was willing to pay for his costs out of my own pocket if it meant we would have a better chance at a championship. I hadn’t told Vern about this. When I mentioned it to Vern, he looked me in the eye and said, “Nah, Walt, you and me, we’re going to do this.” And so we did. In ’88 we went to an invitational collegiate tournament in British Columbia and I mention that for two reasons; 1) it lead to the idea of a spring break trip, and 2) it was on that trip that Vern gave me my nickname. That story is a real Uncle Vern classic. We played against University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia. The majority of the Canadian National team hails from British Columbia, and we played against the likes of Eddie Evans at prop, and Garreth Reese at flyhalf. Needless to say, the scores were one-sided, but the Canadians were impressed with how physical our play was. I remember Jay Moad just punishing people. After the matches I complimented one of their coaches on their player’s fitness. He said, “well they are 25 matches fit,” meaning that in March they had already played that 25 matches since the season began in August. With the temperate weather in BC they can play rugby year-round. I realized that to compete with the West Coast teams that had dominated the final four, we were at a distinct disadvantage because of the weather in Colorado where it can snow even in May. It was then that I suggested to Vern that we travel to warmer climates during the spring break to get some experience and improve fitness. We both agreed and began to plan it. I’ll get back to the spring break trip in a minute, but I thought I would tell the story of my nickname. In Victoria we were staying at the Hotel Strathcona, and went to a bar a few doors away for some refreshments after the matches were over. After a couple of beers I noticed that Vern was talking to an odd looking young lady with orange hair, and when I say orange, I mean it was Day-Glo orange. So I walked over to listen in on the conversation and see what Vern was up to. He introduced me and told me that this woman was a singer in a rock band. The name of the band was The Day-Glow Abortions, and one of their hit songs was called Feed Us Fetus. As I was trying to take this all in, Vern gave her a graphic description of part of my anatomy using his hands to demonstrate. Now this young lady seemed very interested in me and was looking at my crotch and started chatting. Then I noticed that Vern shuffled away and moved back behind her. I could see that he was telling some of the guys the story and laughing hysterically. At that moment I knew that I had been played by the master. From that moment on Vern referred to me by a nickname based on his description. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Vern convinced USA Rugby that the perfect venue for the national championship would be the Academy. And somehow it worked. Now it wasn’t certain that we would even be in the final four the following year, but the wily Uncle Vern never doubted that for a second. So now the stage was set. We were to have home field advantage if we could win western regionals. The other regions must not have been happy about that, particularly the west, that preferred to play at Pebble Beach at sea level, not at 7,400 feet where air is rare. I am sure that some time later USARFU may have reconsidered that decision and realized that they too had been played by the master. We did indeed go on a spring break trip to the southwest in the spring of ’89. It gave us a chance to get out of the wintery weather in Colorado and play several matches, get more experience, and improve our fitness. But there was one outcome that I hadn’t anticipated. During that week of being with one another 24/7 on the bus, in the same motels, on the field, the guys bonded with one another. We may have been a bunch of individuals at the beginning of the week, but at the end of that week we were a team. There were two highlights of the spring break trip that I want to mention. One, Dave Metz injured his ankle and knew that he was not going to be playing in the match the next day, so he helped himself to an extra ration of beer on the bus. And then he started running his mouth. A couple of the guys got sick of hearing this. Metz was in a hammock strung up on the luggage rack, and they duct taped his hands and feet together. And of course that wasn’t enough to silence him, so they duct taped his mouth shut, which wouldn’t have been so bad, but he had a dip of tobacco in his mouth. I was a little concerned about that and kept an eye on him. Fortunately, the tape was taken off a few minutes later and Dave was much more subdued after that. The other highlight of the tour was having one of the bus drivers who had never seen much less played rugby sub into one of our matches. Our bus drivers, Larry and Mark were great and they loved these trips. In fact they would go back to their shop and tell the other drivers that the rugby trips were horrible just so that no one else would sign up. At one of our after-match parties after imbibing some liquid courage, Larry kind of puffed his chest out and said that he would really like to play. I think it may have been the Davis Monthan B side game that Vern put him into. So we let him borrow some boots and put a jersey on him and sent him out onto the field. After about five minutes he took himself out of the game completely exhausted, realizing that it may not have been as much fun as he thought it would be. Then someone came up with the idea that if a bus driver could play rugby, why couldn’t a rugby player drive the bus? So as we were driving down the highway in New Mexico, Larry let Brent Vander Pol take the wheel. One unfortunate event on the trip was that Dan Stone broke his jaw and was out for the rest of the season. He had been our place kicker and we struggled with our penalty and conversion kicking for the rest of the season, so that was a big loss. And I should mention that we lost Frank Souza to a knee injury in the fall. He was a powerful runner, so he was also missed. In the fall, we got off to a rocky start and lost a couple of matches. But by virtue of our win/loss record in our division, we were the number one seed at Western Regionals in Lawrence, Kansas. We opened against Rice and beat them 19-0, defeated KU 16-3, and beat CU 22-9 in the final. So now we were going to the final four. After winning Western Regionals we celebrated at Johnny’s bar in Lawrence, the KU rugby bar. I remember leaving the bar and finding our assistant coach, Army Capt David Myers (also known as FNC; that meant “friendly new coach, right?”) face-down on the ground in the parking lot with his arms wrapped around the wheel of a car. I asked him what he was doing and he said that if he held onto the wheel, it kept the world from spinning. If you are a nuclear physicist, I guess that makes sense. So that brings us to the national championship opening round on our home pitch on May 6th where we faced Army. It was to be an epic battle. Early on Army took advantage of a bad pass and scored a try 10 minutes into the match to go ahead 4-0. At 25 minutes Tim Bohman counter attacked after an Army clearing kick and went 40 yards to score a try making the score even at 4 each. Skip Rogers made a penalty kick to give us a 7-4 lead at half time. 10 minutes into the second half Army tied the score with a penalty kick (7-7). Then Army scored a try and converted it to take the lead at 7-13. Tim Bohman broke loose for a 20 yard run ending in a try off of a set piece and Rogers converted it to tie the score again at 13 all. With 12 minutes left in the match Army went ahead on a penalty kick, 13-16. Army committed two penalties and Bohman had another outstanding run to take us to the Army 6 yard line where they were penalized for going over the top. This set the stage for THE PLAY. This was the most critical play of the match and the entire weekend. The story for THE PLAY goes back to Western Regionals and even further back than that. At Western Regionals we had successfully run a penalty play where Kevin Oleen would set a platform, Vander Pol would clear the ball and we ran a crossbuck with Art Wunder and Ted Schiller. Ted would see where the least defenders were and make the call either odd or even as to which of them would get the ball. Vern and I had seen a guy who was in his mid-thirties with a military hair cut sitting near the end zone in a lounge chair with a clipboard taking notes. Army had sent a scout to regionals and they had seen that play. None other than Army captain John Oliver also knew the play because Vern taught that penalty play at Combined Services Juniors. Not only did Army players know the play, they had practiced it. When the penalty was awarded, Brent immediately made the call to run a penalty play rather than kick and tie the game. He didn’t look to the sideline for us to make the call; he didn’t hesitate. Part of that decision was probably due to our inconsistent penalty kicking, but also it was typical of the slogan for the ’89 team, “Go Big or Go Home.” We were playing for the win, not to tie. AND, Brent knew that he had just the play to beat Army with. Knowing that Army would expect us to run that penalty play, we ran a different version of it which Vern put in the week before the match. Instead of running the play that Army expected, Brent cleared the ball from Oleen, faked it to Art Wunder, Schiller joined the tight five, and we set up a rolling maul and drove the ball right up the middle. Army had defensed the play they thought we would run perfectly and tackled Art before he got to the line. But since they had pulled loose forwards out, they didn’t have enough players to stop our drive. We drove Army back until we were at the line and Brent touched the ball down. We scored and went ahead 17-16. Later that evening reflecting on that play, Oliver and the Army coaches must have realized that they had been played by the master. In fact Johnnie Oliver commented to Schiller about it at the dinner that evening. Always gracious, Ted told him, “we put that one in for you Johnnie.” But the match wasn’t over. We kicked off to Army and they moved the ball up to mid-field. We were penalized for a high tackle, and Army had a chance to win the game with a penalty kick from close to midfield. Army’s fullback, Mike Kilbane, struck the ball well. It was high enough, long enough, but just outside the right upright, the whistle blew, and the match was over. The next day in front of a crowd of over 3000 people, we faced Long Beach in the final. The first scrum down set the tone for the match. It was Long Beach’s put in and we drove them back five yards to be awarded a free kick. Playing at outside center, Tim Bohman kicked an up and under that Wunder and Schiller chased down. Mike Junk cleared the ball and we drove over with Art Wunder scoring. Skip Rogers made the conversion and we led 6-0. Bowden, the talented Long Beach fly-half, kicked a penalty from 40 yards out to make it 6-3. Long Beach was penalized and Skip made the 20-yard kick to make it 9-3. Bohman went on another long run and when he was stopped at the goal line, passed to Floyd for the try increasing the lead to 13-3. Shortly before the half Long Beach scored a try after a nice play with the ball passed through the hands of 4 different players. The score was 13-7 at the half. Rugby magazine commented that the second half was played between the 25 yard lines with Air Force kicking to try to protect a narrow lead and Long Beach trying to play 15 man rugby to catch up. That was partly my doing. I was signaling to Ron Buckley and Floyd to kick the ball out of our end to keep play in their end of the field. I didn’t want Long Beach to tie the the game with an easy try, or get back into the game with penalty kicks. We knew that their fly-half and captain, Bowden, was a dangerous kicker. He could make penalty kicks from half way and could make drop goals from 40-45 yards out. At about 30 minutes into the second half Doug Nikolai cramped up and couldn’t continue. Doug had a problem with cramping up and despite stretching, strength training, and taking electrolyte supplements, he was still prone to cramping. But to his credit, he took himself out of the game rather than trying to limp along knowing that we had Donnie Wood waiting on the sideline. We put Donnie in at outside center and moved Bohman to inside. As I walked off the field with Doug, I said to either Ron or Floyd, “get the ball to Donnie.” Donnie Wood had exceptional lateral quickness and was a dangerous open field runner. And he was fresh not only because he had not played the first hour of that match, but he had not played the previous day either. And having fresh legs on the field made a difference. Every time Donnie got the ball, he was able to advance the ball into Long Beach territory. Then Long Beach was penalized deep in their own territory, and we once again ran THE PLAY. But this time Ted called his own number and scored the try. Skip converted and we led 19-7. With a few minutes left in the game Floyd passed to Tim who ran twenty yards for his third try of the weekend. Skip made the conversion to end the scoring at 25-7. We were clearly the better team, and our conditioning paid off. Long Beach ran out of steam in the second half. I have often wondered what was unique about our team that led to the national championship. I have a few thoughts about that. First, at the Academy even in 1989 there was already a 20-year history of excellence in Rugby. We inherited that legacy. We didn’t have to be trailblazers; that work had already been done by men like Alan Osur, Harry Laws, and others. We were able to stand on their shoulders. We also had the support of the Academy, such as it was. Vern was always asking for more, more funding for travel, and equipment, and as a coach why wouldn’t you ask for more? But we were fortunate to have the support of our Commandants, B Gen Westbrook who had played rugby at the Academy, and B Gen Redden, who had played intramural rugby and believed that rugby is a sport for warriors and that it helped develop leadership. And our superintendent, Lt Gen Hamm stood next to me on the sideline during our match against Army. He congratulated me after beating Army and apologized for not being able to make it to the final the next day. He told me that he had a wedding to go to. I said, “yes sir, I understand.” Then he told me that is was HIS wedding. We shared a laugh about that and I said, “sir, I don’t think you can miss that.” We also had support of guys like Dave Easler, Jim Jasina, Pat Gerdeman, and later Keith Gay that were behind the scenes helping with the logistics of running a club. And we had guys like Barnie Ballinger, and Dave Myers help out with coaching. But trust me, I am not overlooking the obvious, we had YOU GUYS! You were awesome! We had a very strong team, and we were strong at every position, and not only that, we had depth. In fact, we were so deep that in the fall, Vern had the B side play some of our division matches against weaker teams in our territory. That was risky, but Vern was confident that we would win those matches. While the B side played our division matches, the A side played men’s clubs like the Denver Harlequins, and the Denver Barbarians with Eagle prop, Fred Paoli. You guys were smart, although that was not always readily apparent, athletic, coachable, and motivated. It was a coach’s dream. You went into every match thinking we were going to win; that we couldn’t be beaten. Teams like that are hard to beat. Finally, we had one unique advantage over every other team in the country, we had UNCLE VERN … the greatest rugby mind of all time. Vern was our tactician, strategist, logistician, disciplinarian, and the great motivator. I remember how Vern would call us together before a big match and say, “let me explain to you how we are going to win this match.” Vern would distill it down to just 3 or 4 elements that he wanted us to focus on. And what a record he put together. During his tenure as head coach we were: - Back-to-back National champs in ’89 and ’90. - We came in second in ’87 having lost by a single point in the final. - Three times third in the country in ’86, 88, and 92. - After he retired the players he had coached went on to be second in the country in ’93 and ’95. - We were third in ‘94. - He was also the head coach of the Combined Service Juniors from ’86-92 and head coach of the AF select team that went to Japan winning 4 of 5 matches. - Vern also served as the Chairman of the USA Rugby Collegiate Committee and served on the USA rugby board from ‘89-‘93. It is quite an impressive record. The winningest record in the history of Zoomie Rugby. I have a surprise for you guys. I brought my whistle and thought we would go out on the golf course and do the 20 minute drill once again just for old times sake. I think that I can still blow the whistle for 20 minutes, but I want to see if you guys can run for 20 minutes. No, just kidding… I just want to say that I was fortunate to have arrived at the Academy when I did and able to take part in Zoomie rugby from ’86-90.
