3/24/2011
[Content has been edited for privacy reasons]
what’s your opinion on using sports as a means to end intergroup conflict?
C: I think it’s an excellent way to do it because sport transcends a lot of barriers, and in [place] there are a lot of barriers and sports are one of the best ways around it. So I’m all for it, I think it serves a huge role, bringing two communities together past the petty stuff, that is at the root of the problem.
H: Cool, umm, I guess you’ve been here for a while, but have you seen the effects of that in [place]?
C: not so much when I was there, because I left [when place was] really bad, at that time, either side of the community had problems just being around each other, not all of them, but a lot of them, especially in the schools because young people tend to go with the flow of the day, and their not really old enough or mature enough to really see for themselves the reasons why things may be happing the way they are and mature enough to see past that. So, when I was a kid, when I left there I was nineteen, and when I go back there, my family all still live there, I go back there twice a year. I see a huge change in things now, but when I was there as a kid it was the height of the troubles, and it was very little cross community interaction taking place.
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H: okay, rugby, the real reason why we’re here.
C: uh huh
H: can you list for me the values that you think rugby teaches it’s players?
C: honesty, integrity, brotherhood, trust, accountability, work ethic
H: you can keep listing unless you’re good…
C: that’s good for now
H: what values do you try to teach your players, and how do you teach them?
C: all of those. Accountability is built into your system in the fact that your held accountable for your efforts and your performance, work ethic, you do that through our system of practice and conditioning and work outs. Trust is understanding and getting to know what your role is on the team, as a part of the team and performing your role to the best of your ability, so each one of your teammates can trust you. Integrity is showing up and doing the things you know you should do whether someone’s watching you or not. And honesty is just putting forth the effort that is required to be a member of a high performance team.
H: excellent, umm, can you list the important traits for a rugby player? Both physical or personality wise…
C: yeah, I mean everything we’ve talked about there is important for a rugby player, obviously a high level of conditioning is important to be able to physically meet the demands of the sport. Strength. The good thing about rugby is that you can be small, tall, short, heavy, lighter, there’s usually a position on the field for a rugby player that meets all those different body types. So definitely whatever body type you have, as long as you’re strong and physically fit then you can perform on the field.
H: okay, umm…sorry, those are my listing questions. What is a typical practice or game like, and what kinds of things do you say, or do? What is a devotional like for you?
C: the devotional is what we use when we are on the road, mostly, but we still do it here, the devotional is just an opportunity to bring the team together and have an appointed time in the day where they can realize that life is not all about rugby, and all the other stuff that is going on. It’s an opportunity for you to reflect on the more important things in life, as far as church, family, and spirituality. And then at practice, practices are fairly formatted to where during the season we’re usually practicing five days a week. Monday’s usually a ? we break down our performance from the week before and also looking at game film of the team we’ll be playing that week. Tuesday is a heavy day where we’re doing a lot of our defense patterns and systems. Wednesday we focus on our offensive patterns and systems. Thursday we’re looking more at team run, as far as executing plays. On Friday’s what we do is called a captains run, where actually coaches aren’t there, where the captain of the team takes the team for half a ? the basically work the ? on their own how they’re going to play the game.
H: okay, so ‘hypothetically’ you have your 2nd 15 playing Utah’s 2nd 15, okay this is hypothetical, [person] told me that the team played very very poorly, and I should have been there to hear the half-time chat, and I kind of wish I was, can you take me through what that was?
C: yeah, I mean absolutely, we had kind of an off night that night I mean we started out fine, but hten we just sort of went off the board. At half time all the coaches, as I’ll speak to the team entirely at the start and then you split off into the backs, and you split off into the forwards, and they have their relavent coaches
Other: I justed wanted to say goodbye before I left
C: goodbye. Goodbye brother!
C: and they got some fairly realistical feed back from their position coaches and from myself that what we were seeing was basically unacceptable from a BYU rugby player and the team, so it was an opportuinity for them to do some introspection and look at where their performance and their effort was that night, and the general feedback from everybody, including themselves that it wasn’t good enough, and we don’t handle that very well here. So it was a learning experience, and the next week we went up and played against air force and Colorado and played much much better.
H: How do the values that you listed to me at the beginning, how do those play into the typically half time performance review?
C: well everything comes back to them, you know, and we just say what we normally, what we want to talk to the team about obviously, it’s their performance on the field during that day, during the game, but it’s all related to the things that we’ve talked about. If their work ethic not high enough, not where it should be, if their not focusing on their role and they need to be dioing in that role and their missing plays, and that’s a busy framework that we can bring everything back to and do fairly regularly so on game day the feedback we give to the players before the game, halftime, and after the game, it’s all coming back to those areas plus their actual physical effort that they bring ? game?
H: okay, umm, I also heard from some of your players how much you stress the priesthood and church responsibility in the BYU rugby program, what do you think the priesthoods role is in rugby?
C: the priesthood’s role is basically a way we look at it from a rugby perspective, is acting in a way that is appropriate in all times in your life. Nobody’s perfect, and we all make mistakes from time to time, but we’re looking for young men of character young men who are living the values that apparently they believe in. so it doesn’t even matter what religion you are, we just expect you to live a life in a manner that would be expected from a byu student. So the three areas that we really focus on from a rugby program, first and foremost academically, these young men have to perform well academically, because the academic standards here at the school are high, and we expect them and help them as much as we can to succeed academically. And the next way is, as far as living a responsible life eg as instructed in the honor code, the expectations and the behaviors that are expected through that, so we expect everyone to honor that and to adhere to those teachings. And third prong would be rugby. Rugby is a big deal for us. we have high expectations of all the players. We figure if they can hit the mark in every one of those three hours, they will be a well rounded individual, we are producing good standards in life.
H: how do you try to help your players academically?
C: we talk to them on a regular basis, we work with them as far as acadmenics, academic progress is. We work with their professors to make sure they are all doing the things they should be doing. We’ve got tutors available from time to time to help them. Some of those tutors are actually other boys on the team. They being fairly intelligent and highly functioning. And uh, they spend some times with some of the boys that may be struggling in certain areas.
H: I think we’ll just do one more question. What was your experience like when you played rugby? What were your coaches like? What did they teach you? In what ways are you similar or different?
C: that’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of similarities. I think the overall mission is the same at byu since I was a player to actually being a coach, that hasn’t changed, the underlying value of what we’re trying to do. Some of the assistants are a little different. They ??? in life if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards, so always thinking of new ways to be better coaches, we have a better program. So just a lot of things in that we’ve excelled, but the underlying mission hasn’t changed much. Just some of the ways that we’ve…
H: okay, great. I think that’s it!
I started out the interview asking the question: what is a typical practice like? Interviewee responded that most of the guys on the team arrive early so that they can get taped up if they need it. Practice begins with warm-ups, which usually consist of a couple of laps and then some stretching. At first the whole team practices together, and then they split up into forwards and backs and work with their respective coaches.
I then asked the follow-up question: what do the coaches say/do in practice? He responded by saying that in rugby (as opposed to other sports, which he later defined as football) coaches don’t have a lot of say during a game, so they have most of their say during practice. It’s the coaches’ time. They teach the game and things like that, but they also know how to have fun and be serious. It’s a good time for the players because the coaches know more about rugby, and I assume this means that it is a good time for the players to learn from them. But when its game time, it’s all up to the players.
The next question I asked was: what do you like most about your coach? He said that in other sports (football) coaches feel like they have to be hard, they have to be respected, but he said that he likes that he can talk about anything with his coach. I assume that this means that his coach (coaches?) are not like the coaches in other sports. The coach (coaches?) are a lot of fun, and like he said above, know when to have fun and when to be serious. He then said that the coaches are good examples.
I next asked him to give me an example of the coaches being good examples. He said that they are examples in that they have families outside of rugby, they have callings, and through devotional as well. He said that the coaches teach him that church is what matters most, and that they should honor their priesthood. He said that the coaches are a good example balance—they have fun and play rugby, but they also are involved in church.
The most important lesson he feels he learned from his coach was that church is what matters most. And all of the things stated earlier when talking about the examples of his coaches. He also said he learned that family is what is important.
My next question was: in your point-of-view, what is the priesthoods role in rugby? He answered that as a BYU rugby player, you are a representative of BYU, and you have to play to those standards, because there are people out there who don’t like BYU, and you have to live up to those standards. People are watching. I don’t know what I mean by my next note—it says that coaches are examples. I don’t know if this means that coaches are examples the priesthood’s role in rugby, or how to represent BYU. Or maybe something else.
After this I asked what a typical devotional was like. He said that devotionals were held every game day. The players set them up (I gather from further conversation that the coach asks one of the players to head that up, and then that player asks other to participate in the devotional). They start with a hymn and a prayer. Then they have a scripture and/or? a spiritual thought. Sometimes they have a musical number, usually given by a few of the Polynesian members of the team (which he said were mostly Tongan). He asked me if I have ever heard Polynesians sing, and I said I had. He then assumed that I know how good they are at singing then. I then elaborated on Fijians and song, and how it was different than Tongans. I hope I didn’t give the impression that Fijians are poor singers. In fact, I have never enjoyed singing more than when I was in Fiji.
I asked if there are typical themes to devotional. He said that they were not restricted to any one certain thing, they could speak on whatever they wanted, however, people usually tried to tie their devotional to rugby, to that specific rugby season, or to the place that they were (if they were traveling), etc.
Next I asked what a typical game day looked like. He told me it starts with a devotional, and the team either meets at a Stake Center (if it’s an away game), or at the Smith Fieldhouse, if it’s a home game. After devotional the guys have some study time, and then maybe a game-plan meeting. After the game-plan meeting they have the jersey presentation for the starting 15 players, and they forwards and backs coaches present the jerseys to their respective players. He said this was always a really cool experience. After the jersey presentation everyone gets taped up. After that everyone on the team has 15 minutes to themselves to prepare either mentally or physically, then they have the team warm up. He said that the team doesn’t have any post-game traditions, but sometime (if it is a home game) they might get together with the other team and have pizza, and talk. And I think he said that other teams might do the same with them for away games, or at least something comparable.
I followed up with asking how he prepares for a game mentally. He said that he prepares long before the game, usually early in the week when the coaches say who they are playing, and when the team starts preparing for the specific team. He tries to focus his thoughts, concentrate, and think about his role for that day. He said that sometimes he, and the other guys, will listen to music. He said some of the guys listen to Hard Rap, or Hard Rock to get in the zone, but he prefers to listen to chill music like John Mayer, or a (techno?) band from South Africa called Goldfish. We then had a discussion about techno music from South Africa, and I told a little anecdote about South Africa and a certain techno song I fell in love with.
My next question was: what are the most important traits for a rugby player? He asked me if I meant a BYU rugby player or in general. I said that he could take it to mean as he would. Then he said that a rugby player has to enjoy contact (which I understand to mean as tackling), and to not be shy about hitting. He said that a good rugby player also has to be smart with the game. And then I think he said something about a good player has to find these things exciting. He went on to say that a good rugby player has to be well-rounded. They have to be able to run the ball, and tackle. He said that in other sports a player plays only offense or defense, but a rugby player must be able to do both constantly. Also, a good rugby player has to enjoy the game and be aggressive. The last one he said was that a good rugby player has to be athletic, which we defined as coordinated.
I said that I took it to mean that he was talking about rugby players in general, and I asked him about what are good traits in a BYU rugby player. He said that he kind of set himself up by saying that they were different. I think that he meant that maybe they really weren’t that different. Regardless, he said BYU rugby is challenging academically, as you had to maintain a minimum GPA in order to play. BYU rugby players need to find that balance between school, work, and rugby. He then said that a good BYU rugby player had to be a righteous priesthood holder, like we talked about earlier. He said that not all the guys on the team were members, but they still had to be good examples, and the LDS guys on the team had to be good examples for them too. He then reiterated that a good BYU rugby player has to realize that school is more important, or perhaps he meant that to BYU rugby, school is more important.
Next I asked him what it was like playing on the field with opposing teams. He said that when they were playing a team like Utah, there was often a lot of chit-chat on the field. Later in the interview I asked him if chit-chat was like trash talking, and he said it was, but we came to it again, and he said that maybe it wasn’t like trash talking as much as that you knew the guys on a lot of teams, and it was friendly. So we never really defined it that well. Anyway, he then said that some guys on both teams like to run their mouths a little. A popular taunt is “scoreboard.” For example: in the recent San Diego State game, a player on the opposing team did a little trash talking, to which my interviewee said “scoreboard,” meaning—"are you really going to say that now? Look at how much we are winning by." He said that it shut up the trash talking from that certain player. Coming back to the “trash-talking” or “chit-chat,” a lot of the time it is funny, and it doesn’t really happen all the time because you don’t really have time for it in the game, unless its around a penalty. He said most of the “trash-talking” occurred because of late hits, stupidity, or because you just don’t like a certain player.
The End
