Metropolitan New York
Rugby Football Union Est. 1967

History of the Morris Youth Rugby

by Tom Feury

Updated January 2005

The idea of starting a youth rugby program in Morris County first struck Tom Feury at the 1998 Can-Am Rugby tournament in Saranac Lake. It was here that his oldest child Blaze, then 6, participated in a youth rugby clinic organized by Pat Walsh who was the pioneer of touch rugby in the Baltimore area. With the future of the Morris Old Boys in doubt and A side play beginning to take its toll on Feury’s aging body, youth rugby appeared to be a new potential career extender.

Tom spent the next several months securing the permission to run a summer youth rugby program in his hometown of Denville NJ. It was an uphill battle gaining access to fields and becoming an accepted town recreation program, but the battle was won and plans put in place to start the first Morris youth rugby program in Denville in the summer of 1999. The first priority was to recruit enough children to make the program feasible. Luckily, the Feury’s had met several other Denville families through their kids other athletic pursuits and convinced several to sign on. It was also important that several other Morris ruggers lived in town including Gerry Francisco, Rick Merrill, and William Dobbs, all of which contributed kids, coaching skills, or both. The final and most important recruitment tool was getting an application and flyer sent home to all the elementary school kids in town. In the end, 28 applications were received.

Peter Glanvill, then the men’s side coach, stepped in to help organize the training sessions. The kids were broken into 2 divisions: Kindergarten through 3^rd grade and 4^th through 8^th grade. The program was run as a clinic and Peter had the sessions well organized with three stations for each kid to pass through, each keying on different rugby skills. Mike Stumpf developed an excellent video entitled "What is Rugby? A Youth Rugby Orientation", which helped tremendously in getting the concept across to kids and parents alike. In the end, the season was considered a success as the parents raved about the great coaching kids received the how much more organized rugby appeared to be than some other sports their kids participated in. Not a bad complement for a sport many consider to appear quite unorganized!

In the fall of 1999, John Sutherland (Big Toe) organized a great tour to Ireland for the World Cup. John, who also helped coach the youth program in the summer, wound up bunking with a relative newcomer to Morris Rugby, Craig Chapman (Chappie). Ten days, four rugby games, and plenty of great Irish stout provided a perfect opportunity for Feury and Sutherland to sell the youth rugby idea to Chappie and by the end of the trip, Craig had pledged to start a second program up in Montville.

Chappie used the same template Feury used to secure fields and players for his new program and managed to attract close to 30 kids for Montville’s first season in the summer 0f 2000. The Denville program expanded to 50 players, which enabled us to add a third division, thus making things more competitive. The season ended in what can be considered the first "Junior Jersey cup" when Montville hosted Denville to a fun day of rugby and camaraderie.

During the winter of 2001, Kurt Murrell realized that his son, Eric, was no longer able to play youth rugby now that he was in High school so he began to lay the foundation for a future Morris Rugby high school side. He secured some field time in Denville and spread the word. The program was run as an introductory clinic in the Spring of 2001 and drew as many as 20 area high school players, both girls and boys. Since most of the kids never saw or played rugby before, Kurt stuck to the basics and "touch" only. However, the groundwork was being laid for a full-fledged 15’s program in the future.

During the summers of ’99 and 2000 Peter Simcox (Simo), a veteran Morris rugger and Denville youth coach, was traveling from his hometown of Long Valley to Denville to help coach and allow his boys Brian and Peter to play. Simo also spent a fair amount of time with Feury in the winter of 2001 Skiing in Vermont with the families. The many hours spent on chair lifts together allowed the two to talk rugby and it was Simo's complaints about traveling to Denville that prompted Feury to put the squeeze on him to step up and start his own program in Long Valley. Simo hooked up with a Welshman by the name of Paul Evans and the Long Valley program was born. Following the now well scripted formula to starting a community youth rugby program, they recruited 43 players for the best start yet for a new team. The Denville program grew again to 79 kids and Montville now had 50 for a total of 172 youth rugby players. The three teams competed in several "test" matches, which led up to the Junior Jersey Cup which was again hosted by Montville. This year, a team comprised of 8^th and 9^th graders came up from Downingtown PA to play in the tournament, making for some great competition. Their coach, Jim Rosata then invited the Jersey kids to play against them on Conshohoken PA during the halftime of the National Sevens tournament. A select group of youth ruggers from all three towns braved a driving rain to play and did very well against a much bigger Downingtown side. The highlight came when Steven Delosa, a kindergartener on the Morris side, put a move on one of the Downingtown defenders scoring a try and bringing the crowd of 5000 to its feet. When interviewed by the tournament director after the game and asked who his favorite rugby player was, Delosa declared "Mr. Feury and the Morris coaches" to be his rugby hero’s and making us all proud.

How do you improve on those feats of 2001? Start another program! This time it was not a Morris Rugger who stepped up to start a team, but Carmine Catalano of Parsippany. Carmine had coached the past 2 seasons in Montville where his kids were playing, and had played a little rugby in college. Carmine was also a football coach in Parsippany and a member of the Parsippany PAL, so he was in an ideal position to gain the support needed to gain access to the kids and fields. We juggled some coaches around and freed up Alex Panas along with Andy and Sue Steinberg, both who lived in Parsippany to help out. The result was instant success in Parsippany, where 70 kids turned out to play. Of course the other programs were continuing to grow as well with both Montville and Long Valley turning out 70 and Denville reaching an incredible 110, which resulted in over 300 kids playing in the Morris Youth Rugby league.

Not only did the program grow in participants, but it also grew in quality and organization. KJ Feury secured us several grants through the National Safe Kids Campaign to help fund the expansion. She even arranged for the youth ruggers to stuff some of the NJ foundations bystander care kits to add an additional $1200 to the kitty. Tom Feury negotiated with Rugby Imports for a partnership deal, which would bring us $1000 in free equipment in exchange for us promoting their name. Real Rugby Jersey’s were finally purchased – and boy did the kids look great in them! The season finale was the Junior Jersey cup where we ran over 45 games on four Denville fields in a six hour period. The atmosphere was wonderful with tents set up for free food, Edy’s Ice Cream (a sponsor), Rugby Imports, and the National Safe Kids campaign. There were even a few big score boards posting the pool and championship round results for each of the three divisions: Falcons (k-2^nd grade), Hawks (3^rd-5^th grades) and Eagles (6^th-9^th grades).

The other major notable event of 2002 was the start of the Morris Rugby high school program. Led by head coach Bob Karetsky (the new Met Union’s youth development officer), manager John Sutherland and assistants Kurt Murrell and Kevin Laughlin, the program was a huge success. John organized several recruiting sessions in the winter of 2002 and put together an aggressive 8 game schedule. Being the first high school rugby program in New Jersey, the 25 high schoolers who turned out to play would have to travel a good distance to their matches, but those who did, were bitten hard by the rugby bug. Bob’s coaching program led to improvements with each game they played resulting in the highlight of the season where they played a newly minted south Jersey side in the first ever high school division of the Jersey Cup and were narrowly defeated in an exciting rugby match.

2003 led to continued growth in all areas. Another high school team was started at Saint Peters in Jersey City and the Morris Lions had over 50 kids on their roster. They had an excellent season which resulted in winning division 2 of the newly formed Metropolitan Rugby Unions high school division!

In the youth sector, two more programs were started in Morris. Former Morris rugger Pat Ryan kicked off the Randolph Rhinos which attracted 50 participants. In fact, if the town recreation department had not capped the participation level there, he would have attracted closer to 100! Wayne Lumkung and Alex Ciaraffo started the Byram Bruins, which added another 35 kids. The established programs also continued their growth bringing the total participation level in Morris youth rugby to over 500. Most amazingly, the Parsippany Panthers grew to 160, making them the largest sports program in the town! Additionally, Union Rugby club began a program, traveling to Morris each weekend to play. Once again, the highlight of the season was the Morris Rugby Junior Jersey Cup, which was hosted by Long Valley. 57 teams participated in over 100 matches on 13 pitches. This was managed by a strict schedule in which all games started on time at the blast of an air horn each half hour. The high school rugby team provided additional referees to manage the matches. Each of these kids was eager to give back to the sport they fell in love with and, thanks to a few referee clinics provided by Mike Stumpf, they did a fine job. Adding to the excitement was that Gatorade was the tournament sponsor and US Eagle Mark Griffin was on hand to sign autographs for all. As always, there was plenty of free food and drink for all.

The youth season did not end with the Junior Jersey cup this year. Many coaches and kids traveled to Saranac Lake to run a youth rugby clinic, which attracted many kids from around the country. The hope is that they would take the game back to their communities and get things rolling there as well. The highlight was when the kids played some exhibition matched during the half of the championship games in the Stadium. It was a day they will all remember as they were cheered on by hundreds of avid rugby spectators!

All programs continued to expand in 2004 and 2005. In 2004, the youth program grew to 700 participants in 7 towns with the addition of Mine Hill which was initiated by Morris Rugby’s Omar Rivera. We also began an introduction to the 15’s tackle for the middle school boys. Our boy’s high school team fielded 2 full sides and moved up to the first division of the Met Union and won the Long Island and Jersey cup tournaments. They also had their first alumni game over Thanksgiving weekend, which was a big success and will surely become a tradition. In 2005, a high school girl’s 15’s tackle side will be organized, as well as a U15 boy’s side. The town of Denville, which was the cradle of youth rugby in NJ, built the first youth rugby pitch in the state for the kids. The Morris Rugby corporation donated the funds necessary to place the largest rugby posts, 50’, in North America on this pitch.

Where will Morris youth rugby go from here? It will continue to grow and spread throughout the state and country. Other clubs and towns from around the country have approached us to help them begin their own youth rugby programs. We will continue our search to find some land which will allow us host tournaments and provide space for all the growth.  There is much work to be done, but the rewards are great – please join us in our drive to make rugby a potential part of every kids childhood!

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