Interview with Jesuit Rugby's Coach Anthony Mattacchione

The Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas hired Coach Anthony Mattacchione to guide it's rugby playing students in 1999. Since then, Jesuit Dallas completed 11 trips to the Texas Semi-Finals, twice winning the State Championship. What is the secret to such prolonged success? Is more of the same to be expected? Ruck Bottom coaxed Coach Mattacchione to divulge a tiny bit of that information!

RB - Jesuit Dallas embodies the principles established in the Profile of the Graduate: Open to Growth, Intellectually Competent, Physically Fit, Loving, Religious, and Committed to Working for Social Justice. Other than Physically Fit (where the answer should be obvious), how to you translate these principles into coaching your Jesuit ruggers? How well does rugby dovetail with the Profile?

Coach - As Jesuit educators all Jesuit staff members including coaches are asked to model the Profile of the Graduate at Graduation and instill it into all students including our Athletic program. I believe the benefit for our Rugby program is the fact that both my assistants have graduated from Jesuit Secondary Schools and are great young adult role models for our players. It also helps in terms of the Intellectually Competent aspect, as all members of our coaching staff teach classes at various grade levels and subject matter; two are in the counseling department which means they know when students are struggling with grades and usually have direct contact with those subject teachers and can work together to help students achieve success in the classroom.

Our program tries to embody all the components of the Profile in everything we do. We tell all athletes that the most important thing in life should be their relationships with their family and God, their education and lastly athletics. The beauty of Rugby is a lifelong sport and there will always be time for it in a player’s life. We know that unexpected things happen so we recognize that students should always be able to miss practice if needed for family reasons. Anything they missed can always be relayed to them or made up when they return.

As for religious, as a community we end of every practice or match we have a group prayer and open it up to the players to pray for their general intentions; we believe that this helps the players to understand one another; and they might then recognize why another member might be having a bad day or seem not their usual self. This also leads to the loving aspect as they find it easier to approach others with similar situations as theirs; this is often more acceptable and easier that you think in an all male environment. Throughout our season we always make time for team prayer services and when traveling on weekend trips we make a point to visit a church to fulfill our Religious obligations.

For over a decade we’ve been committed to working for Social Justice by hosting several events including Score A Try For Humanity; a touch tournament in the fall to collect blankets for the homeless at The Bridge and the Austin Street Shelter.  We have been able to collect of 650 blankets and several hundred dollars for this cause. The team has also hosted on a few occasions a Quad Rugby match to raise funds for wheelchair athletes in both basketball and rugby to attend local and national tournaments. More recently we have followed other teams across the country and taken up the support for to tackle cancer through our Scrum for the Cure match and supporting the Tackling Cancer Foundation.

RB - Jesuit Rugby will be playing in pink jerseys versus Coppell HS on February 3rd in Scrum for a Cure. What drove the decision to become involved in the various cancer-fighting foundations? Can other rugby programs become involved in similar ways? How do they get started?

Coach - In terms of the Scrum For A Cure event, we began this event only last year but had been thinking about it for several years. Michaela White was a close friend to the members of the Class of 2011; she attended the Ursuline Academy of Dallas and had been diagnosed with Cancer in her junior year. For a good part of the last two years the boys had taken time off practice and spent many weekends helping her out and attending various Cancer related fundraisers and events to help with her illness. Understanding the impact that cancer can have on family and friends we saw this as an opportunity to address the issue and help raise awareness.

Call it divine intervention or providence; at about the time we began to place things into motion I met Dallen Stanford (creator of Paki's Corner) at the Rugby Texas AGM who had introduced us to his Tackling Cancer Foundation and the following week I was meeting with Roger Thomas from Knockout Sportswear, our tournament sponsor and team uniform supplier, who loved the idea of sponsoring the event. Our thoughts were to bring these two aspects (Cancer and Rugby) of our student’s lives together and model it after a similar event in the Lady Hager Cup in support of the Pink Ribbons Project that St. Thomas High School had in honor of Coach Brett Mills’ grandmother. When we asked him if there would be any issue with us doing something similar; Coach Mills was excited to hear others take up the fight against cancer and wished us success.

Open bids for the jerseys were placed on e-bay and the Proceeds from the event and online sales of the game jerseys were donated to the Tackling Cancer Foundation and the organizations they support. Total sales were about $1800 and we even had jerseys sold to people as far as New Zealand in support of this cause.

Any team can create such an event, the key is community involvement. Everyone wants to attend an event which raises awareness for any charity. This year we have been working closely with several parents and they have taken on the responsibility to promote this event and making it feel like a typical “Friday Night Lights’ event. Start with an idea and see what your supporters have to say. Then run with it!

Jesuit (White) scrumming versus Kansas City

RB - How does Jesuit Rugby identify who will captain the team: coaches' choice, team vote, or another method? Is there anything specific that you do to develop your captain to lead the team?

Coach - Considerations for captains are taken from returning players at the end of the season when we vote on our annual team awards. After the names are submitted the coaches review the names see which players are the most considered leaders by their peers and we then evaluate them for their ability to lead, take direction, make decisions on the field and their performance as a role model both on and off the field of play and their attitude. In some instances we will also ask for the input of graduating team members who have developed a relationship with players beyond the playing field.

Once we've identified those players who might assume the role of captain for the following school year we track their engagement with other members of the program, their off season work outs and dedications and their interaction with us as a coaching staff. For the past several years we've changed when and how we make this public knowledge as we believe that in some instances we might have overlooked an individual who has yet to reach their potential as a leader or the opposite, one who might be a great leader but doesn't like to shoulder the responsibility of being a captain. It’s also not uncommon for us to have had a senior and a junior designated as captains for the year.

RB - Have you already played an preseason intra-squad match? How did the teams respond to each other? To different aspects of play? Did any players stand out in leadership or individual play?

Coach - About 5 years ago we moved from away from preseason scrimmages and trips to the OU Rugby Camp to start our season off to assort of “Boot Camp” weekend. In essence it’s more of a team retreat weekend with students attending Rugby related workouts, team meals, prayers service, athletic events and a mass on Sunday morning prior to the match which was followed by a Rugby community wide potluck arranged by the parents and families. This is a lot of Rugby in the span of 3 days; but our choice to do this on the Martin Luther King weekend was well received by players and parents alike as the that weekend marked the end of the first semester and Monday could be used to recover from an extremely long weekend of Rugby.

Overall we believe the weekend was a success, the match ended in a 10 – 10 draw and the teams were selected by the coaching staff, mixing up the new and returning players based on experience and also balancing out the grade levels. The great thing about this event is it doesn’t matter if you’re a freshmen or a senior; everyone will get in at least 35 minutes of playing and you get to put into action what was taught. Have to admit that there were a few ‘light bulb’ moments where you could see it all come together. As for standout players we expect some students to have great success with Rugby and returning seniors Julian Fragoso and Lamar Mott each showed exceptional play for their respective teams. Freshman Mark Vaché and Junior Kyle Black had many great runs from the back of the scrums and in the open field; these two might be the future back row of our team in the next year.

RB - Jesuit's got a tough cup and friendly schedule this season. What can we expect from Jesuit Dallas this year? What part of the game do you think will be their biggest challenge? Their greatest strength?

Coach - Like all teams our end goal is the State Championship weekend. The program has been fortunate enough to be there many times. Last year we had a tough final match with St. Thomas and they gave us everything and earned a tough win, probably the best weekend of high school rugby the State of Texas has seen in both the single school and club school finals.

This year we have committed to playing school teams throughout the state and beyond, even making trips to El Paso and New Orleans for matches. Our schedule is exactly what the players’ need; our strength this year is our numbers with over 50 athletes in the program and trying to get as many games as possible for all levels is a key. We hope that we have achieved this and we’ll know in May whether or not we were successful.

The biggest challenge as a coach might be not having enough games for newer players to participate in to get a field of the game. With more game experience the easier it is to show players what the game should look like and how it should be played. There is a need for more Junior Varsity and Freshmen sides across the state and hopefully with teams looking to play both a 7’s and 15’s format in the same season; the number of teams can grow.

The work that John Shafto has done with the Rookie Rugby program across the state has helped to do this. Teams and schools across the entire state could benefit from the dedication and commitment that such individuals as John have placed in introducing this great game to a larger number of people.