Touch '09!
This weekend was my 4th year in the Tokushima Touch Rugby tournament and 2nd year organizing the teams from Shiga. As always, it was a great weekend. This year especially, because I actually contributed more than stable defense this year. In my first three years combined, I only participated directly in one score, getting a direct assist. 3 tournaments....1 point. This year, I had direct assists on 10 points and 1 score myself. 1 tournament...11 points.
Our team fared better than any I'd ever been on as well. My first two years, I was on Shiga's B team. We had great A teams both years (one won the championship), and our B teams ranged from bad to average. My 3rd year, we suffered from a mass exodus of Kiwis, and we basically had no one left but 1st timers...mostly Americans. We didn't win until our last game. We didn't have an incredibly impressive record this year (1 win 3 losses, 4 draws), but we played much better, and ended the tournament 11th out of 21 teams.
One of our most impressive feats happened in a loss. The team that ended up winning the tournament was stacked with Kiwis who play rugby proffessionally in Japan - a couple of them have even played proffessionally in New Zealand. The score at the half? Fistful of Funazushi (us) 2, Nga e Wha (or something like that) 1. Unfortunately, we made two bad passes in the 2nd half that led to a quick 3 points and we ended up losing 6-2. They may not have been playing with a sense of desparation the 1st half, but they certainly weren't taking it easy, either. We ended up in a 1st day playoff with them though, and lost again 5-1.
The names of Shiga's two teams were Fistful of Funazushi and Biwako Basselopes. I made both of them. Funazushi is fish that is fermented 2-3 years before eating. Rotten fish. It's a delicacy in Shiga. Biwako = The biggest lake in Japan, located in Shiga. A basselope is a fictional animal - half bass, half antelope. I made the logo for it as well...Well, by made, I mean finding a picture of a bass and a picture of antlers online and putting them together. Still, it's pretty badass and the shirt got lots of compliments. Fistful of Funazushi's logo is also fierce, and is an original work of Shiga's own Kyle.
Seeing as how I'm the most experienced player on our team (that in itself should hoist an army of red flags concerning our team's skill level), I refereed other games for the 2nd straight year. This year, I was actually a confident ref and controlled the game better than a lot of other refs. If I end up moving back to the States, I'd like to start up touch in my area. I find it a lot more engaging than other field sports and can be played by a variety of age/skill levels.
I didn't take many pictures, but the ones I have are up:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicyak/