Alumni Weekend 2009: October 9-11
The VRFC alumni weekend is right around the corner, and the team is getting excited about welcoming you for a weekend of rugby, on and off the field!We will start Friday evening with a few drink specials at Zinc Bistro on West Main Street, from 5pm on.
The next day we meet bright and early at the VFW on River Road (home of our new regulation size pitch!) for a few games of rugby. At this point we are planning on 4 teams: hopefully one 100% alumni team, the VRFC A side, and two teams made of VRFC B side players, UVA undergraduates and Darden graduate students. Each team will play 2 50-minute games, with the winners of the morning games meeting in the final at 2:45pm. A drink up will follow the mini tournament at the VFW until 6pm.
For the courageous, the VRFC is holding its annual banquet that evening and we would be delighted to welcome you there. Tickets for the banquet can be purchased here.
Finally, our tournament sponsor Zinc Bistro will offer a 15% discount for Sunday brunch, and we encourage everybody to join us between 11am and 3pm.
For organization purposes please contact our Alumni co-chair Marc Breton (mb6nt@virginia.edu) to let us know if you are coming and if you need any help with lodging or transportation.
The club has decided to cover the entire weekend so we can happily announce that there will be no fees for the tournament or social following the games.
Schedule:
| Day | Start | End | Event |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday 10/09 | 5:00 PM | 9:00 PM | Welcome drinks at Zinc Bistro |
| Saturday 10/10 | 10:00 AM | 11:15 AM | Game 1: VRFC 2 vs. UVA |
| 11:15 AM | 12:30 PM | Game 2: VRFC 1 vs. Alumni | |
| 12:30 PM | 1:30 PM | Lunch at the VFW | |
| 1:30 PM | 2:45 PM | Game 3: Loser game 1 vs. loser game 2 | |
| 2:45 PM | 4:00 PM | Game 4: Winner game 1 vs. winner game 2 | |
| 4:00 PM | 6:00 PM | Drink up at the VFW | |
| 8:00 PM | VRFC banquet ($70/person) | ||
| Sunday 10/11 | 11:00 AM | 3:00 PM | Brunch at Zinc Bistro: tournament participants (and guests) are eligible for a 15% discount |
Links
Subscribe to the VRFC Alumni Mailing ListMany of our Alumni still take the field with the Cardinals, a team that fields sides of 35 plus, 45 plus, 50 plus, and 55 plus players. Typically, they travel to the Fort Lauderdale Ruggerfest, the Savannah St. Patricks Day Tournament, the Can Am at Saranac Lake, and the Aspen Ruggerfest.
Photos
From Jim Rollins, VRFC President 1967-68:
The team shot is at Nameless Field in March '68. Standing (l to r) are George McCallum, Malcolm Smith, Jim Rollins, Gene Lyons, John Ashton, Tom LaVoy and Jay Dalgliesh; kneeling are Julian Rainey, our hooker (whose name I regretfully do not remember), one of our wingers (whose name has regretfully also slipped my mind), Munny Yates, Alistair Duckworth, Butch Dietler [we often had a problem keeping Dietler facing in the right direction] and Courtney Hoopes [in a typically Hoopesian pose]; reclining in front are Tovi Kratovil and Dietler's dog. There weren't very many young kids in this bunch: McCallum, Smith, Rollins, Ashton, LaVoy, Yates and Kratovil were in law school; Rainey was in med school; Lyons was in grad school getting his PhD in English and Duckworth was an English professor; and, if I recall correctly, Dalgliesh and Hoopes were in what might be called an "extended" undergraduate career. Since Tovi (who was the team captain and had been our fullback) seems to have been refereeing rather than playing when this picture was taken [the result of his having had his leg busted to smithereens in a match in Nassau during our infamous spring break trip to the Bahamas in 1967 - I'm sure there will be many stories about that trip, the Flxible Flyer, Ace and more at the reunion], we don't seem to have had a playing fullback in the picture, although I assume we had one on the field. Can't remember who it might have been in those days - Mike Richwine, maybe?
The lineout picture was probably taken the same day as the team shot: (front to back) our hooker, Ashton, LaVoy, McCallum, Rollins, Smith, Lyons and Dalgliesh. A similar lineout picture actually made it into Sports Illustrated about that time, along with a short article on the Commonwealth Cup (read the article here). The SI writer was most impressed with our goal posts, which Kratovil, fresh back from a year or so in the Marines in Viet Nam, had fashioned out of 25' bamboo trees, complete with bushy tops, with cross bars lashed on with rope (this was before the era of duct tape).
The other picture, also at Nameless Field, is from October '67. Our bunch never did win the Commonwealth Cup [although we did come close twice - get someone to tell about the finals in '69 when Butch Dietler knocked the ball loose from one of the Old Blue backs and was headed in for what would have been the winning try, only to have the referee stop play because the Old Blue guy was out cold on the ground], but we did win the Colonel's Cup, which in those days was given by Colonel Van Ormond to the winner of the VRFC - Washington RFC match each year. This is the Colonel himself presenting the Cup to the VRFC president, with Tovi Kratovil and a couple of the Washington players looking on [no one seems to have complained about our having the team captain referee the game, but I'm sure we won fair and square anyway].
From Michael Jones:
Here's the B side from 1977. As best as I can recall
they are as follows:
Front row. Mike Jones, Carlo Scheffel, Matt Murray, Mike Puopolo, unknown, unknown, Fred Harper.
Second Row: Dave Honeyman, unknown, Eric Sandlund, Dave ___, Graham Chapman, unknown, George Moorhead, Joe Seals.
From David Hughes:
Team photo from 1981-82.
David enjoying a Bud after a match.