By Mike Pankonien

Staff Writer

The Coppell rugby team has started the year with fierce determination to rebuild the team to its former standards.  Having ended the season with roughly 40 players, the team is down to 15 people. 

The majority of the players are now juniors, and although most of them are relative newcomers to the team, there still remain a few veterans.

“It’s all rebuilding; no structure, no spots; were just focusing on playing,” junior Zach Getson said.

The team is now led by three junior captains; Zack Korman, Philip Hanson, and Zach Getson.  All three played on the team the last year.  Not only did the team gain new captains, but also new coaches.

“Our original coach moved to McKinney, so he found us two replacement coaches,” Korman said. “Both are semi-pro rugby players.”

The new coaches, George Mundstedt and Tom McCormack, are experienced semi-pro rugby coaches from the Dallas Harlequin Rugby Club.  Having played the sport since college, they’ve both coached nine high school teams that have reached the national championships.

“It’s a great group of kids; they’re athletic, they’re focused, they’re interested,” Coach Mundstedt said. “We definitely will be working on fitness portion of the game. That, plus just finding out who’s going to play what position are the most important things right now.”

Last year’s team set the bar high for the new players; the team was mostly made up of seniors who had played together since they were sophomores.  After playing a solid winning season last year, the team

“We were good last year, I mean really good.  But now that most of the old players have gone off to college, were hardly the same team anymore, “Philip Hanson said. “Most of the people know how to play.  We’re a little short handed right now but once football’s over we’ll get some more players.  All we need right now is lots of hard practice.”

Because the rugby season doesn’t start until January, the team has plenty of time to work on it’s game.  Practices last for two hours after school on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.  The team warms up by first running drills and then moving on to handling the ball.  After learning and practicing easy tactics and plays, the team wraps up by dividing up for a quick scrimmage.

“The coaches are running us pretty hard right now, but frankly we need to run hard,” Getson said.  “We’ve got a long road ahead of us if we want to live up to what the team last year accomplished.”Coppell rugby practices behind the fieldhouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m.  New players are always welcome.

“We need players.  If someone can’t make a practice every now and then, we aren’t going to totally bench them.  People got things to do and places to be and we understand that,” said Coach Mundstedt.