Alumni face off with rugby teams
Chris Matthews
Issue date: 10/27/05 Section: Sports
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Friends reminisced on the sidelines as the Bullets and Bulls Rugby Club teams played former Truman players in the annual Homecoming Alumni Game matches.
The Bulls decidedly defeated the alumni 58-5, but the returning alumnae beat the Bullets 22-0. Although the matches were physical, the players and alumni said the games were mostly for enjoyment.
Senior Sean Foley, captain of the Bulls, said the team was less strict with its strategy during this game than it is during a regular match.
"[There's] definitely a different feeling to these [alumni] games opposed to a league match," Foley said. "Ninety percent of it's fun."
Graduate student Kyle Stephens said he has played rugby for the past five years and knows a lot of the alumni who played.
"It's good to see the old guys again," he said. "They brought a good team, and we had a fun game. We smoked them pretty good."
Mark Dodson, a 1984 graduate, said he has returned almost every year to play.
"[I come back because] it's Homecoming and [to] meet the guys I haven't seen for a long time," he said. "The alumni haven't done so well in the last few years. We've lost the last two [or three], ... but the team's getting better, it seems like. They keep getting younger, or I keep getting older."
Dodson, 45, plays on a league rugby team in Kansas City and said he contributes the loss to most of the alumni's lack of time on the pitch.
"A lot of [the alumni] are out of shape," he said. "If we had [had] enough players that play throughout the country on club teams, then we could have given them a pretty good game."
Bulls head coach Bill Sexton said 18 alumni came back to play in the game and give donations to the club.
"Part of the effort of the game is fun and camaraderie and bringing people back together that played together, but also it's a pretty straight-out giving event too," he said.