Cicero and Naperville battle to 10-10 tie
By Dave Surico
There's an oft-used adage in sports that a tie is like kissing your sister. Perhaps that should be amended for rugby, where a tie could be considered more like running over your sister.
Either way, after the last grunt was uttered between the Cicero Paladins and the Naperville Crusaders team two, a 10-10 draw amounted to nothing less than an outstanding battle between two skilled teams Sunday at the Palatine Pioneers Junior High Festival at Busse Woods in Schaumburg.
Cicero scored its points early. Adrian Gutierrez scored on a penalty in the eighth minute. A player on loan scored the Paladans only try in the 13th minute. Gutierrez added the conversion for a 10-0 lead which held up at halftime.
Naperville tied the game in the 44th minute. The Crusaders tries came on long runs from Robbie Hazen and Andrew Fraczek. Both conversions were missed.
"Personally I thought we played excellent," said Naperville's Fraczek. "We tried really hard. We kind of got angry with the other team. The way they were playing, they were playing really, really clever.
"We didn't expect them to be constantly kicking down the field. We were waiting for them to run so we could tackle them, but they'd kick the ball and it would be really difficult to chase them down."
Fraczek is a football player in his first year of rugby. He discovered the game while goofing around with a friend, who is now a teammate.
"Rugby is way more athletic and funner in my experience than football," said Fraczek, who will attend Oswego East in the fall. "It has different rules of course, but it's a really talented game."
Naperville coach Graeme Jackson thought the outcome of the game could have been different with different tactics from his team (1-0-1).
"We probably could have won if we had played wider, controlled ball instead of taking it up the middle which was their strength. We played too much to their strength instead of our strength, which is pick a pace out wide," he said.
Naperville, which has 40 players in its program, has evenly split squads.
"We've got two sides right now," Jackson said. "If we wanted to try and win we could stack our team. We've got 19 eighth graders. But to us there's no point to do that; because what happens to our smaller kids? They'd get clobbered every weekend. That's why we've opted with the philosophy of split even teams and rotation at halftime.
"We only practice once a week. You get more experience playing the game right now. We're strictly about learning the game. We're the only club that actually rotates our players at halftime. So the forwards will play the backs in the second half, and the backs play forward. So it's all about the kids getting game time and learning different positions. And if we win, great, and if we don't it's not the end of the world.
"We teach the spirit of the game. It's a development league so we want the kids to learn it and enjoy it. When they get to the high school level they have more of an idea of what position they want to play. And at that level it's obviously a lot more serious."
Enrique Yanez was the man of the match for Cicero (0-1-1). He found out about rugby at his school, St. Frances of Rome.
"My priest at school told us we were going to have a rugby team and asked if we wanted to join," said Yanez, who will attend St. Patrick High School. "At first I didn't know what rugby was. I knew it was a version of football without the protective stuff, so that got me kind of happy. Ever since then I've just loved rugby. Rugby's pretty fun. It's non-stop action."
Cicero coach Miguel Gomez looks for good things from his team down the road.
"The boys kind of got sort of tired," he said. "We'll work on fitness. Otherwise they did pretty well."
Naperville team two line-up
Alex Cole
Adam Coates
Nate Dalan
Quinton Jackson
Tomas Medina
Suraj Jena
Bernie Laskowski
A.J. Geogehan
Andrew Fraczek
Garrett Kizior
Keegan Bramlet
Gavin Conley
Evan Morris
Rory O'Moore
Andrew Leonard
