Paul Andrew, the animating spirit of America’s de facto national championship in the 1960s and early 1970s, this week expired of complications following a stroke.
Andrew, better known as ‘Boomer’, founded the Monterey National Rugby Tournament in 1959, the 30-year-old Olympic Club player having decided to act on the shortage of local competition. ‘There were only 9 teams in California and maybe 25 nationwide,’ he later told Sports Illustrated. ‘I was getting tired of playing the same teams week after week’.
The debut corresponded with the sport’s resurgence on college campuses and in big cities. Together with Steve Yost, Andrew persuaded teams to come to the out-of-the-way Monterey Peninsula. Soon it was seen as a gathering of the country's best, offering a shot at such powerhouses as Stanford and Santa Monica.
Monterey's success inspired comparable events in Aspen, Chicago, Saranac Lake, and elsewhere. None achieved the same aura of preeminence. Later, after USARFU’s 1975 founding, Collins Polo Field — the tournament’s home since 1971 — several times hosted the union’s new collegiate championship. After the 1990 edition, however, the nation’s oldest rugby event was jettisoned by the new Japanese owner of the Pebble Beach Company, a sign of the times.
Andrew, a Cal graduate and Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, had since established himself as a San Francisco property manager and hotelier. He continued as a rugby entrepreneur, for example helping organize the 1992 USA-Hong Kong match at Keezar Stadium, a contest that prefigured the next decade of American international rugby.
Slowed in his later years by a first stroke, Andrew was from the amateur era of the mid-20th century, when all was to be done in the interest of the players, and so often not much done at all. He stood above it by providing teams with more and better competition, and thus takes his place in the history of the American rugby as one of the first, and few, men to deliver what athletes really want.
Last month, Canada lost its distinguished national team manager and referee coach Don Widden.
Someone might know more definitively, but I believe the Monterey tournament was the first fifteen-a-side rugby tournament in the world, in the sense of the teams assembling in one site and playing multiple games over a day or two.
In 1988, Boomer and Ginger bought their place in Carmel. He called the local rugby team, Monterey RFC, to help him move in. As team treasurer, I answered the call. Four of us showed up to help and it took only a few hours.
As is his wont, he offered us something for our trouble. No sir, we said, the local tournament is all the thanks we need.
But he'd heard us talking about our upcoming tour to Hawaii and insisted on "at least paying for the kit".
I told him there were 56 tourists signed up, with most getting tour bags, two sets of strip, t-shirts, spares for trading, etc. Not a problem, Boomer said, demonstrating yet again that he was one of the best friends American rugby has had.
Posted by: Bruce Carter | 28 March 2014 at 12:47
A true legend and a gentleman. Always positive and supportive in our contacts. He leaves a trail of rugby footprints.
Posted by: Ray Cornbill | 29 March 2014 at 05:30
The 1988 Monterey Tournament was my introduction to rugby as a Marine at DLI-Monterey. But for it and a female rugger HS teacher of mine, I'd not know this great sport. Thanks Boomer!
Posted by: Grant | 29 March 2014 at 06:37
I had the pleasure and honor of knowing both Boomer and Don Whidden. No finer Rugby gentlemen have walked this earth. They will be missed by many from many countries.
RIP old friends.
Posted by: Keith Seaber | 29 March 2014 at 10:38
Five-years ago, Boomer served me lunch in Piedmont during a Rugby Magazine interview on the Monteray Tournament. The bulletin board in his den was filled with old photos of the event, those wonderful memories never far away. He spearheaded the donation of the Tournament's archives to Stanford, where they can be accessed by appointment. And he wrote of the beginnings of rugby on the west coast in an Olympic Club newsletter. Let's hope he's voted into our Hall of Fame soon.
Posted by: Allyn Freeman | 29 March 2014 at 14:41