Transformation From Tackling Dummy to Tackle Savior

I am not a rugby player. I am not a morning person. And, just to clarify, I am not a woman.

So why did I rise at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, toast a breakfast bagel, and trudge across Weeks Footbridge to attend Radcliffe rugby practice?

To coach, naturally.

Yep. Hand me a whistle and pit-stained T-shirt and call me Coach Jonnie. For 35 minutes, I ran a women’s rugby practice.

Not an easy task, considering I’ve never played in, or even watched, a rugby match. All my knowledge on the subject came from a Google search. But there I was, with the undivided attention of 30 women for the first and probably only time in my life, and they expected me to help them with their sport.

Talk about pressure.

My job was simple: teach them the finer points of tackling. For lack of a better plan, I thought back to 1996 and one of the key lessons I learned as a freshman football player at Garber High School in Essexville, Mich.

“The first thing you have to do,” I told them, “is aim your head right at the other person’s crotch.”

None of them gave me a weird look. Right then, I knew they meant business.

All-American Tackled

My career as a rugby coach began accidentally. I was attending a study break in the Dunster JCR a couple weeks ago when a friend of mine on the rugby team asked me for tips to improve her tackling.

I laughed. She knew I played football in high school, but I don’t think she knew the details.

See, I was the starting quarterback in all 18 games my junior and senior seasons. We won two of them.

We were bad. Comically bad. Our running game was inconsistent and defense nonexistent. But we did have a few “triple threats” on the offensive line—you know, guys who were weak, slow and dumb.

I spent every Friday night running and throwing for my life. And, despite our record, I was actually OK at it. I threw for 2,151 yards. Unfortunately, I also recall losing about that many on sacks.

I was hit backwards, frontward and upside down. Often. Eventually, Mom stopped trying to get the grass stains off the back of my jersey.

I was tackled a lot. But you know what? I was damn good at it. You know how they name All-American tackles? I was All-American tackled.

I can tell you 10 different ways to pick yourself off the turf, readjust your shoulder pads, pluck grass from your facemask, and say into the huddle, “Heyyya guys I’m stardin ta get dizzy so maybe ya shud start blockin, OK? Prety pleas?”

Learning on the fly

All this made me both an expert and a novice in tackling. I was often the hittee, rarely the hitter. I knew a good tackle when I felt one, but didn’t produce them myself. (When people ran back interceptions, I was always too slow to catch up.)

So when my friend asked for my help, I was more than a little concerned. But I recalled enough of the basic tackle tenets—bend with the knees, ‘club’ the person’s thighs, drive forward with the shoulder and legs—that things went well. Before long, she knocked the wind out of me. Felt like old times.

A day or so after the impromptu practice, my friend sent me an email—cc’d to coach Darlene “Bubba” Connors—asking if the “Tackle Savior” could come to practice and impart the same wisdom to the whole team.

Unreal. I had gone from Lifetime Tackling Dummy to Radcliffe Rugby Tackle Savior.

Of course, I agreed to come to a practice. Problem was, I had no idea what exactly the team needed to work on.

Not to worry. Bubba did.

“Do you want me to take them through full-speed hitting drills, like in football?” I asked Wednesday morning.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “We’re trying to get these girls tougher.”

“And do you tackle people the same way you would in football, even though you don’t have a helmet and pads?”

She nodded. “They have to go right after each other.”

OK, then. The only question that remained was whether or not the Radcliffe rugby team was going to listen to the instructions of a 5’9, out-of-shape sportswriter with no experience in the sport.

Turns out they did.

Ballcarriers and language barriers

At first, I dispensed football clichés: “Get low!” “Drive through ‘em!” “Bite the ball!” Before long, I had the players partner up with a teammate their size and line up 10 yards across from them. Time to tackle.

We began half-speed to be sure everyone had the technique. The tackler would jog toward her partner, wrap up her legs, lift her off the ground and carry her a few steps.

Soon, we took off the training wheels. The ladies asked few questions, preferring instead to drop their friends on their butts. No timid souls on this team. No mercy, either.

I loved it. So did Bubba. It was so much fun that it lasted 15 more minutes than we planned.

And as 15 grunting collisions went on around us, Bubba and I took turns yelling at the players about technique. “You gotta wrap ‘em up!” we shouted.

At one point, we had what Bubba called a “cultural difference.” I had been instructing the tacklers to get their heads across the ballcarriers’ bodies, a technique used in football to make surer tackles and eliminate cutback lanes. This approach also helps get more of the tackler’s body in the runner’s path, increasing the odds of bringing him down.

The physics of this dictate that the ballcarrier often knees the head of/lands on the tackler. In football, with helmets and pads, this isn’t a worry.

In rugby, it is. So, Bubba untaught my flawed pedagogy. She said to tackle “cheek-to-cheek” on the inside, rather than go across the body.

I apologized. They understood. Everyone resumed hitting.

Fit them for shoulder pads

I left practice that morning thoroughly impressed with Radcliffe rugby.

These ladies are athletic and tough. They’re also dedicated, even though when they’re done getting and giving bruises each day, they won’t read about their team on the pages of this publication or the Harvard athletics website.

This is a club sport, which means no funding and little recognition. Everyone’s reason for playing is the same: love of the game.

And, from what I could tell Wednesday morning, they’re pretty good at it. They can run, they can hit and they can be enthusiastic at 7 a.m.

I only wish they were blocking for me four years ago.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.