From chumps to champs
Want to watch a winning football team?
Well, OK, it’s not football, but to Europeans rugby is considered the father good ol’ American pigskin.
The UNM rugby team, another successful club team, has changed its culture and become a top-10 club squad, rugby team member Drew Riordan said.
“Right now the rugby season is a yearlong season,” he said. “It’s basically a fall and spring season.”
The team doesn’t offer scholarships and pays for almost all travel and equipment expenses out of its own pocket. And it’s had a few successes. The squad went 3-1 in non-division play and 2-2 within its division.
The Lobos won the High Desert Classic tournament, the second biggest and longest-lasting tournament in the western United States.
But the UNM rugby team wasn’t always competing for championships.
Before head coach Miguel Berthet took over the team two years ago, the Lobos struggled to win games and were dysfunctional as ever.
There was no one better suited to coach the team, especially someone who has been playing the sport nearly his entire life. Berthet said he is honored to coach UNM.
“We basically started from scratch,” Berthet said. “We recruited a lot last year, and we’ve
recruited a lot this year.”
Even in the offseason, the Lobos practice Tuesday-Thursday from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Johnson Field.
Berthet said that there are open tryouts to UNM students, but rugby isn’t for just anybody.
“For a lot of people, just handing the ball is a challenge,” he said. “Most of American sports are eye-hand coordination. The thing with rugby is that we’re always going. We run four laps around to warm-up, so that is two miles. We start everyday with two miles.”
Alex Melad, who has been on the UNM rugby team for the past couple seasons, said the runs are rigorous but rewarding.
Despite juggling school, a part-time job and playing for the rugby team, Melad said he wouldn’t trade playing for the world.
“It’ pretty crazy, and it’s all about time management,” Melad said. “You have to plan out your whole week, and you even have to do it a couple of weeks ahead just to make sure you have everything down. You have to be at everything you do early so you don’t forget anything.”
Coach renews spirit, record
Miguel Berthet knows rugby.
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Berthet, the UNM rugby team’s head coach, has been playing rugby since he was 6 years old. He was born and raised in Argentina and moved to the United States in 2001, where he ended up coaching club rugby at San Diego State.
Alex Melad, a member of the team, said Berthet brought championship rugby to UNM.
“He has been an inspiring coach,” Melad said. “He brought the club back like a new life. He tried to recruit from all over the country to come and support our great team here at UNM. He improved from and helped us basically go from no wins to being undefeated. We used to have injuries problems, and he has pushed us.”
Berthet is known for being loud and obnoxious with his players, but it’s all for good reason, said Drew Riordan, who is also on the team.
“He’s a top-of-the-line coach,” Riordan said. “He keeps the work rate up, and he likes to keep the intensity up at the same. But, at the same time, he likes to keep us a little bit relaxed. You know, he is cracking jokes and talking (expletive) about players. He pretty much talks (expletive) about players when they mess up and they’re not doing things right. He’ll tell them they are being lazy or whatever it is they are messing up. He’ll talk to you the whole week until you pick it up.”
Riordan said that Berthet has changed UNM rugby’s outlook.
In his time as head coach, Berthet turned the Lobos from a losing squad into winners, Riordan said. He said the team went from abysmal to ranked and just missed out on the playoffs.
“We were always pretty much defeated,” he said. “We were basically like what the football team is going through right now, but it was more like two years straight.”
Berthet said the transformation required hard work and dedication. He said rugby isn’t for the faint of heart.
“It’s an exhausting thing,” Berthet said.
