Quantico Rugby

By Lt Col P

By way of Our Man Inside VMI, Op-For proudly brings you this tribute in today's Washington Post, about Quantico's never-say-die rugby team.

The article's about how the team and its devoted members have to "start from scratch twice a year" due to reassigmments and rotations.

The Quantico rugby club has been around for 35 years, and even at its best, it is not among the region's elite. The Hooligans play in Division III, the lowest in the Potomac Rugby Union, and their 40-year-old coach, Lt. Col. Jon Jacobs, said they will not move up in the foreseeable future. Division II clubs need to have an A and B team, which requires more depth than the Hooligans can hope to attain.
During one stretch in the middle of the decade, when Jacobs said "the planets aligned" and a handful of good players were able to stay on the base for multiple seasons, the Hooligans were at the top of their division. But at Quantico Marine Base, known as the "Crossroads of the Marine Corps," such things are not meant to last.

Some members finish school or training and head to another base in the United States. Some are sent on tours of duty to England or Egypt or Okinawa. Others head to Iraq or Afghanistan. Last fall, the team lost five players in midseason because of deployments to Iraq. "And four of them were key guys," said Jacobs, who also plays.

Make that LtCol Jon "Shiner" Jacobs... VMI '89. And you can count on him not to quit.

At the beginning of each season, when newcomers to the game don't know what they're doing in practice, when passes are missed and there's no fluidity to the attack, Jacobs's affinity for the Hooligans keeps him going.
He loves the camaraderie of socials after every Thursday practice, when the team heads to Sam's, a bar in the town of Quantico.

Check out the gallery with the text-- BR Jacobs is in images 8 and 12.

If you're in the greater Quantico area and know the game, I'm sure he would welcome the help... Good work BR, and good luck!

March 25, 2008 12:08 PM Our Beloved Corps ~ VMI

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Comments

hubba hubba! I'm sending my single girlfriends down to loiter around Sam's on Thursdays.

Pia · March 25, 2008 12:33 PM

As a former member of the Royal Military College of Canada rugby club, I can appreciate the situation at Quantico. With a school population of about 800 when I was there (and 100 of those were women), we had a rather shallow athletic talent pool to draw from. Especially given that we als fielded competitive soccer, hockey, martial arts, basketball, etc teams from that same population.

Our only salvation was our fitness: if we were only down by a bit in the first half, we could generally wear out the other team in the second half just be being more fit and working harder - the one non-talent-dependent thing we could control in our own performance.

Our social events were also somewhat...exuberant. If we didn't beat you on the pitch, we'd out-drink and out-sing you at the beer-up afterwards.

I recall using a graffiti-covered Econoline owned collectively by the team to kidnap the Chief of Defence Staff (roughly the Cdn equivalent to your CJCS) and his wife after a mess dinner one evening, empty beer bottles rolling around in the back (don't worry, we weren't drinking and driving). Being a former wing-forward himself, General de Chastelain thought it was a great lark.

Rugby makes for some great memories, many of which come off the field.

Best of luck to the Quantico Hooligans (what a fantastic name for a rugby club)!

Damian · March 27, 2008 06:19 AM