Down-Under Coaches Over Here (2008/12/14)
When Edmond Rugby Coaches Greg McFadden and Garrick Cocker telephone friends and family, they dial across 7,800 miles of ocean, nineteen time zones, and six months on nature's calendar. For Assistant Coach Dante Lazzarotto, family is three time zones away, basking in the summer sun.
McFadden and Cocker hail from New Zealand. Lazzarotto is from
Argentina. When it is winter here it is summer down under. But, thanks
to the Edmond Rugby Club, Oklahoma has a touch of home for these Southern
Hemisphere transplants.
For them, it was a missionary effort to create the Edmond Storm,
which competes in Oklahoma's Green Country Rugby League with Norman,
Mustang, and six Tulsa schools and against Wichita, Kansas, for the Great
Plains Trophy. After last year's first game, McFadden told friends,
"Now, I feel that Edmond is home."
A New Zealander, McFadden is the Storm's USA Rugby-certified backs
coach. He came to the U.S. in the 1990s and played rugby for the old
Oklahoma City Men's Club. His first local attachment was future wife
Whitney Zeka of Canton. "On our first date, I thought, oh man, I love
this country." And what did they do on that first date? "I showed her
rugby videos."
New Zealand and rugby have been a part of the couple's lives ever since.
Greg even proposed to Whitney while on a train over a New Zealand
mountain pass. There was no way he could back out. Waiting for them
with banners and cheers at the next station were his old rugby mates.
Forwards coach Cocker, also a New Zealander, came to the
U.S. to attend Brigham Young University. A player for the powerful
Auckland-Ponsonby club, Garrick joined Provo United and the Steelers.
While at BYU, he met Deborah Allen, a Kiowa-American from Anadarko.
Bound together across the Pacific by love and a strong Mormon faith, they
have three girls and son Josh, who plays for Edmond . The couple
operates Echelon Construction.
Joining these pioneers on game days is Argentine-born Dante Lazzarotto,
an international businessman, who is a stickler for fitness. The players
joke that Lazzarotto is Spanish for "two laps around the field and twenty
push-ups." He and his Argentine wife Mariana, have an 18-month old
daughter Mia.
The Edmond Rugby Club is a tax-exempt, non-profit Oklahoma corporation
affiliated with USA Rugby. Club President Dr. Richard Bernard, Graduate
Dean at the University of Central Oklahoma, learned his rugby twenty
years ago when the U.S. State Department sent him to New Zealand's
University of Canterbury as a Fulbright Lecturer.
"I began by cheering the red and black of Canterbury," he
recalled, "and now I help manage the red and black Storm. Same uniforms.
Different teams." That's literally true, for McFadden's father, a New
Zealand rugby official, shipped Canterbury jerseys to Edmond. "Imagine
if a high school football team could wear real Dallas Cowboy uniforms,"
said McFadden. "This is the rugby equivalent."
Rounding out the Storm's staff are Parents' Council Chair Rulissa Trout
and Secretary Nancy Christensen. Parents' support is crucial since the
club follows the New Zealand model of family and community involvement.
"We bring boys together," said Trout, "We bring families together just as
the boys are reaching adulthood." To do that, the club has many family
social events, including those around free post-game meals for the Storm
and its opponent at Edmond's Flat Tire Burger.
This camaraderie has carried over to Oklahoma State University and the
University of Central Oklahoma where several former Edmond players now
play.
Edmond may not have New Zealand's mountains and wilderness areas, but it
does have rugby, the world's second most popular team sport. "None of us
had played before last year," admitted scrum-half Ramsey Bush, "but the
coaches made it exciting. I was hooked in 20 minutes." Forward Tyler
Trout could not agree more. "In this game, you knock a guy on his tail
but then have dinner with him after the game. Rugby is one fun game."
The Storm's 2009 season starts in late January. Schedules will appear
shortly.
New Field from the City of Edmond (2008/11/16)
Edmond Rugby Club gets a new field from the city, see more in our article
Edmond Rugby Club and the Haka (2008/10/02)
Edmond Rugby Club gets into Wikipedia. See more in our article
"Forever Strong" More Than a Movie (2008/09/12)
The club gets the inpirational movie "Forever Strong" to come to Oklahoma City. See more in our article
Training Begins (2008/09/09)
Rugby Players Storm into Action. See more in our article
Puckett Flies Above the Storm (2008/08/01)
Think rugby players only fly in a line-out? See our article
First Victory (2008/03/30)
The Edmond Storm achieves their first victory against the Norman Colts See more in our article
New Website! (2008/09/25)
Thanks to the efforts of the University of Central Oklahoma's design department, the Edmond Rugby Club now has a new website. We hope you enjoy the site and look forward to utilizing it to inform the community and our families of the Storm's events and accomplishments.
Designed by students of the Department of Design at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Designers:Cody Smith, Cassie Howard, Joel Uber, Holly Lee, Kyle Ramsey, and Michael Moore
©2007-2008 Edmond Rugby Club