FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, a band of misfits has been bringing rugby to Santa Fe. Out at the desert’s edge, on a meticulously well-kept grass pitch, they come together to batter each other into submission and share a beer.
Rugby is one of the most popular sports in the world, but not in America, where we play a slower game with little breaks every few seconds that we call football. So ruggers here tend to be a breed apart. Many of these amateurs play the demanding sport for decades until certain body components – knees, backs, etc., give out. But they stay involved out of love of the sport.
The Santa Fe Santos recently hosted the 50th or 51st version (depending on who you ask) of their yearly kickoff tournament, and I sat down with the current club president Eric Schmierer and three of the longest-serving club members – called “old boys” in rugby parlance – Dave Wheelock, Derek Gordon, and Richard Morris. We talked about their team, its future, and what makes them love something that hurts so much.
How’d you all start playing rugby in Santa Fe?
DW: I started at the University of New Mexico in the early 70s and then came to Santa Fe and played for a long time. Went on the tour of England in 1986, played in Santa Fe until ‘95 with a couple of breaks to play in England. I retired in 2017 and worked my way back to Santa Fe.
DG: I came to the club in 1989. I moved here from Minnesota, parked my truck at the Capitol, unhooked the U-Haul and drove around town. I found an old player, Richard Morris, bouncing a rugby ball within minutes. I’ve been with the club ever since.
RM: I started playing in 1976, back East. I was involved in starting high school rugby here in Santa Fe in 1985. I’m the current coach.
ES: I started at New Mexico State, and came up here right after school in ‘94 for a job at Los Alamos National Lab. That first week I was here, with a colleague of mine, we started playing with the club. About five years ago I started getting involved with the club again. This year, I’m president.
What’s the origin story of the Santa Fe Santos?
DW: The club was started by a couple of young lawyers from Santa Fe who were working in the office of the Attorney General. They started playing rugby in Albuquerque for what was then known as the New Mexico Rugby Club. But they lived in Santa Fe and decided to bring it up here.
What were those early days like, playing rugby here in the 70s and 80s?
DW: It was definitely a counter cultural activity! Almost all of us had long hair. We had facial hair before facial hair was everywhere. The music was the Rolling Stones and all those British bands. Nobody in the states knew what rugby was, so that went into the mystique of it. Then there was the beer. Big groups of men drinking and singing songs. Incidentally, I’ll say that after 50 years of rugby, I’ve never seen a fight at a rugby party. We had people from all walks of life, as we do now – we had lawyers, we had refrigerator salesmen, we had doctors, we had laborers. Just all sorts of guys. We probably had some guys who didn’t work at all.
ES: We had a broad mix of backgrounds and types of professions. In the last few years, one of our biggest influxes of new players has been people that are working technical jobs at the labs. They come out of the college with rugby experience and are looking for a club.
DG: To echo on that, we were at an after party one time in Denver, sometime in the early 2000s, and I heard someone say I’m not gonna go talk to those guys, they’re all really smart.
Rugby players are smart?
RM: From a player perspective and a coaching perspective, rugby is a game that isn’t as structured. Unlike American football where you have a play and you stop, you have specific tasks to perform and then it’s done, rugby is more flowing, and your tasks are always changing based on what’s in front of you. You have to think to keep up with it and make the right decisions.
You can’t turn your brain off when you’re playing.
RM: Well, you can, but it’s not very effective. Athletes and people in general want to be able to do that, to have that freedom and make decisions. If it’s the wrong decision, then you learn from it and you move ahead.
DW: I think Richard’s getting right down to the core of it. The real game is not only being intelligent but having an emotional intelligence to be able to confront your own emotions on the field and respond effectively. In rugby, ineffective choices are punished not only psychologically, but physically. There’s a great stimulus to make correct decisions, and the guys that are winners are those that can deal with their own emotions while they’re playing.
How does the culture of rugby differ from American football?
RM: If you’re, let’s say, a high school player and you’re not accepted into the football team because of your size or whatever, if you come to rugby, you’re accepted for several reasons. One, because it’s that kind of culture. Two, most teams need players! They’re searching for more players. If you make a mistake, you generally don’t get chewed out. It’s more of a community. If you’re small, there’s a position for you. If you’re big, there’s a position for you. There’s a place for whatever body type you have.
DW: Rugby didn’t turn professional until 1995. There are vestiges of the British polite society where you are expected to behave properly. Today in rugby, there are players from all walks of life in all different countries. It’s lost those class distinctions entirely, but has retained the best traditions of the game, which is that gracious, accepting, thankful manner.
What is unique about playing rugby in Santa Fe?
RM: You’re at 7000 feet. You’re at 7000 feet and you get tired!
DW: In the bylaws of our club, on the first page, it states that we strive to be a welcoming club to everyone that we come across. We all love the game. We’re pretty old men here and we’re still involved because we want other people to be able to enjoy the kind of experiences that we’ve had and enjoy the feeling when a bunch of rugby people get together.
DG: Number one, we like to win. We play for a national championship every year. Some years we’ve done better than others, but we’re always striving to do that. Our culture is always one of improving as individuals and improving as a team – we work as a team together. Everyone has that common goal, improving and doing better as individuals and a team. But then as a social culture, it’s a family. We’re all friends. We’re all buddies. We love to laugh. We love to hang out with each other, at rugby games, rugby practice, social events, whatever it is, right? We just love each other and want to hang out with each other and laugh and have a good time. That’s another trait of rugby. We’re always out to call a buddy. You need some help, they’ll be there for you. It’s that family sense of Santa Fe that I think is especially important.
How did your club end up with such a great playing field?
RM: Back in the ‘90s, the city was trying to have a recreational sports complex. The Bureau of Land Management owned this land, and they had an agreement with the city where if you use it for recreational purposes, we’ll not let you have it, but it will be for your use. So, they did the Marty Sanchez golf course. They did the soccer fields. They did the softball and baseball fields. And they had this little piece of land across the street that they didn’t know what to do with. We had someone who was in politics that was able to get some money from the state and we got it built. That’s how it came to be, because it wasn’t going be used for anything else, so we made the most of it.
What’s the team looking like today?
ES: I got back on the team about four years ago and was looking at the registrations. Our average age was 35 for the club, and it was this steep bell curve, very localized around 35, though we had players all the way up to 50. In the last two years that average has gone down to 30. Many of these new players have been recent graduates – a significant amount from New Mexico Tech have come in for jobs at the lab. The lab has hired 2000 people in the last two years, and it’s been a significant place for new jobs.
DW: In the last few years, these players saw what it was like to win a championship.
If I was interested in playing, what’s the pitch?
RM: If you want to enjoy something that is physically exerting, that makes you work hard, that’s fun to play, and has a lot of camaraderie – not only within the team, but within other teams – then you should come out and give it a try.
DW: I think that’s a great start. It seems to be a big thing these days, let’s get fit and let’s do the most extreme thing that we can do. We get some guys like that, and I imagine some of them have a come-to-Jesus moment.
ES: It does take that desire to get into it, to the excitement of it, because it is different. People show up and don’t know what to do. It takes a mentality and desire to persevere, to get through that barrier of either unlearning football or just learning the sport in general. I see that when new people show up.
DW: The biggest challenge we have is convincing people that it’s not just a smack-around session – it’s technique, and if you use the wrong technique, you get punished, and it hurts. It’s a finesse game. Some people are more on a cerebral level than others are, but it takes all kinds to make a rugby team.
RM: I coached high school girls rugby. When you’re recruiting those girls, they’re like, I get to hit somebody? Because all their lives they’ve been told be soft, don’t hit anybody, it’s not what a girl does. So, they’re like, yeah, I want to hit somebody. When these girls get tackled, their mother is on the sideline and her face is aghast, and then the girl pops up and she’s got this big grin on her face, because she just got hit with the ball. It’s this experience they haven’t had, because it’s not culturally proper.
DG: My line is, come play rugby with us. You’ll meet a bunch of people, and it’s fun. I played football all through high school, all through college, and I played one semester of rugby because a guy in the classroom said, hey dude, you look like a rugby player, come try it. I fell in love with it. It’s just so appealing.
DW: That’s the common thread with all of us.
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Photos Gabriella Marks
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