On parents and scoreboards

Foreign-born parents can be reassuring to adults who worry about high school rugby.

Perhaps 75 to 100 attended Saturday's game between Elsie Allen and the Marin Highlanders, the leading teams in Northern California's Redwood conference. The welcome turnout prompted a Highlanders assistant to observe expatriates have been 'really good' in addressing safety and other worries among parents of the burgeoning team.

The inference is that knowledgeable adults are validating some of the coaching staff's work. Parents who don't know the sport are being educated by parents who do.

Although San Francisco is arguably America's rugby epicenter, far more adults are familiar with soccer while lacrosse has shot right past our code of football, in part because Eastern transplants have jumped in to boost fledgling lax programs. While youth and high school rugby teams have been established in some cases for more than 20 years, many have struggled to gain the ultimate seal of legitimacy: parental approval.

Often enough, coaches say, it is due as much to parents' failure to grasp the sport as to teams' conduct and management, rugby's traditional shortcoming at the senior level. The insight, then, is that foreign-born Americans needn't coach or manage, but can help confer legitimacy by supporting sons and daughters who play the game.

The Highlanders helped their cause by conventional means, billing the contest as a 'homecoming' game for the league title while simultaneously staging an alumni barbeque. Played at a high school facility, the event was more appealing than the soccer game across the way.

In a back-and-forth match that saw three second-half lead changes, Elsie Allen prevailed 21-17, scoring the winning try on the game's final play. Highlander parents were stunned -- in part because they could not understand the referee's signals and also since there was no scoreboard (and timeclock). Always something else to do ...

Comments

[LOLing]

The muppet coach of the Highlanders also doesn't realize that when you have a full arm penalty 10m in front of the posts, you oughta take the points.

[Old Beaver]

Go to Home Depot, buy a 4 ft x 4 ft. piece of dry erase board for $13. Add a Dry erase marker .....bingo! Scoreboard.

Tape some leftover firework sparklers to the edge for a "scoreboard with pyros"

[MCK]

This article is a bunch of nonsense.

[Nick]

LOLing,

Please stop it with the "full arm" and "short arm" crap. There are perfectly good terms for a penalty and a Free Kick without people adding new names.

MCK,

This article is not nonsense at all, it highlights something positive, while highlighting a simple thing that really should be added, which would confer some much needed legitimacy to rugby matches.

[L town Wells]

People new to the sport will pick up on it more quickly, if they can tell what the score is.

I hate showing up to my alma mater on a Saturday afternoon and needing to ask about the score, then getting 2 or 3 different answers.

[Hmmm]

When parents ask coaches why there is no scoreboard, the right answer is 'ask the Athletic Director and Administration of the school'.

Some enterprising soul should setup up USARUGBYTOURS.com because I'm pretty confident if you live overseas and get the chance to tour CA,NY, etc. visit a few colleges, and play rugby you'd go in a heartbeat.

[Mike]

I suggest that USAR form an exploratory committee that could solicit nominations for names of LAU volunteers to form a committee to solicit input from local representatives who may or may not want to give recommendations to fund-raising organizations who might approach potential corporate sponsors to suggest avenues for funding scoreboards. Only after, of course, an extensive examination of the potential benefits of scoreboards on each tier of US Rugby, which would have to be thoroughly detailed in a position statement. And then Gainline could write hours of banal commentary on how inept USAR was at getting the score board issue resolved.