Fort Collins was not invited to Ruggerfest, and as of 2 weeks ago was not even entered in this high calibre tournament. But due to the persistance of the Flamingo match coordinator, we were able to jump in last minute. This is a tournament that we look forward to every year, primarily due to the extreme skill shown by the majority of participants. We always learn alot and improve our game, even if we arn’t able to win against the Division 1 and Super League clubs that typically fill the pools.
This year, however, we traveled up to Aspen with a team that is just starting to hit it’s stride, and work together as a team. So we performed much better then expected. Pool play placed us against Grand Rapids and Boulder, both high quality Div 1 clubs. Grand Rapids put some quick points on the board, but were held tryless for the last 30 minutes. They had the best scrum we faced the whole weekend, and wound up winning 26-0.
We surprised Boulder, by coming out strong and scoring the first try. They quickly fired back with their own try and penalty kick leaving the score at 10-7 for the rest of the first half and most of the second half. Their depth and experience overcame our aggresiveness allowing them 2 more tries in the last 5 minutes of the match putting Boulder ahead by 24-7.
This put us against the Kansas Jayhawks on Sunday morning. The Jayhawks are a solid university team, who consistantly are in the sweet 16. Fort Collins, in 2003 was soundly thumped by this very team, so were not to be taken lightly. Most of the team, except this author for one, made sure to get back to the condo early on Saturday night in order to get sufficient sleep for this match. We came out strong, maintaining possession through many phases, scoring a try and several succesful penalty kicks, before the Jayhawks broke through for a try. Unfortunately the author, who did not feel he needed a good nights sleep was the one who missed the tackle to allow the Jayhawk try. The final score saw the Flamingos winning by 15-5.
This win placed us against the Kansas City Blues later in the day. The Blues are a Super League club that had an unlucky seed in pool play, having lost to what turned out to be an extremely strong Kudu U-23 select side, and tying against the University of Oklahoma. This turned out to be a great, very closely matched game. The Flamingos scored 3 points first with a penalty kick in the first half. While still ahead, Fort Collins was awarded a Penalty in a spot that could be fairly easily converted, but chose to go, unsuccesfully, for the try. This was then followed by a long run for a Blues try, making the score going into the half 7-3. With 2 minutes left, Fort Collins was awarded a penalty 10 meters from the Blue’s try line. With a 4 point differential, kicking was out of the question, so we went for the try. For the next 5 minutes, the Flamingos tried forward crashs, back crashes, and mauling and still could not get the ball down. Several penalties were called during this time against the Blues, and thats what kept play going. The argument could be made that several of those should have been called penalty tries. But the whistle was finally blown for a final score of 7-3. Overall an excellent match despite the loss.
Final standing for the weekend was 10th place with a 1-3 record. We learned a lot, and plan to take this momentum into next weeks league match against the Harlequins.
For a slightly different perspective here is commentary from Aaron Fields:
We have just returned from Aspen Ruggerfest and our team played with inspiration and heart. The weekend ended with our team record at 3 losses and 1 win. The record does not adequately portrey the level of rugby that our team displayed this past weekend.
Our first game was against a large Div 1 side from Grand Rapids, MI. It was a tough game and our guys played hard, but this was a great warm up for the rest of the weekend(23-0). Next game vs. Boulder (another D1 side). Our learning curve was going up quickly and the game ened up at 21-7. Not bad for a team that beat Aspen last season. Needless to say, we partied like rock stars that night, but had to be up for a 9am game vs the KS Jayhawks. This was the game we won. A great team effort…it looked like we had played this game before. That afternoon we prepared to take on a super league team, the Kansas City Blues! To make a long story short we lost the game 7-3. Can you say defense? At the end of the game we had 7 (yes 7) penalties on thier goal line which were blantant attempts at cheating to stop us from scoring…should a been a penalty try!! Then the ref blew the whistle prematurely to end the game. That was our game!!!