Player Camp:
On Saturday, 30+ players traveled up to Leo Carrillo State Beach and Park to attend an all day camp. The weather complied for the most part and we had an overwhelmingly success experience. Every player grew in his knowledge of rugby and of how we intend to play this season. More importantly, the guys grew together as a team. We capped the day off with a trail run up to the top of one of the hills, then back down to the beach for a quick dip in the ocean, and finished with a team bar-b-q. Though the weather was cold and rainy, the guys embraced the adversity and made the most of it.

OPSB:
Following a physically demanding Saturday, we faced RSL team Old Puget Sound Beach from Seattle in a Sunday friendly. Unfortunately, lack of accountability by several members of the team lead to late arrivals to the field, which meant that Coach Lewis would shuffle his line-up from the one that had trained together the day before. OPSB signaled their intentions early by electing to take a penalty from 40 meters out within the first 5 minutes of the match. Alternately, when we had a kickable penalty a few minutes later, I elected to kick to the corner and go for a line-out. We had 2 successive mauls end with penalties against OPSB but were unable to finish off the 3rd line-out with either a try or yellow-card against the opposition.

From that point onward, the half went back-and-forth between the 22’s with neither side showing a great deal of polish. OPSB would score a soft-try on a poorly covered clearance kick where the Dolphins defense simply failed to cover the near sideline. The Seattle team would close out the half with a second penalty goal for a score line of 0-11.

The second half would feature a mixture of first- and second-side players as Coach Lewis continued to search for solid personnel combinations. We would give-up a couple more soft tries in the half but finally broke through in the last 5 minutes as flyhalf Robert Kremer would find a gap on the outside of his defender, slip through and offload to Kelly Serfoss for a try in the corner. Final score: Santa Monica – 8 : OPSB – 26.

While we improved significantly week-over-week, we have a long way to go in terms of our understanding of the game and how Coach Lewis wants us to play. Our situational decision making needs to improve a lot if we plan to contend in this league. Beyond that, we need to, as a team, gain a hunger for the try line. We did several things well in the game but let too many scoring opportunities go begging.