PEOPLE PLAY Games

Rugby player has more of a family experience with sport

BY RANDALL P. LIEBERMAN

Rugby football is named after the Rugby School in England, where in 1823 a young student named William Webb Ellis picked up the ball during a football (soccer) match and started running with it before he was thrown to the ground violently as might be expected.

Soon, a new full-contact sport was developed known as rugby — short for football as played at the Rugby School — which is a sport extremely popular in Europe and elsewhere. It is one of the least popular and well-known sports in the United States — though it is the most popular club sport on U.S. college campuses.

Virgil Russell, 52, of Indialantic, began playing rugby as a teenager in England and joined the local Brevard Old Red Eye Rugby Club when he moved to the area in 1989. As a young man, Russell was a highly competitive rugby player, serving as both captain and player-coach of the local Brevard club for many years and leading it to success.

For individual honors, Russell was a good enough rugby player to be selected to both the Florida Rugby Union and Eastern Rugby Union South all-star teams.

But, as Russell got older and started raising a family — and as he had less time to train competitively to participate in the sport — Russell began seeing rugby less as a path to competitive glory and more as an outlet to have fun. Furthermore, playing rugby allowed Russell to have common interests with teammates when living in different places around the world — and gave him opportunities to travel to exotic destinations around the world to make rugby vacations part of his family’s travel and vacation plans. Every time Russell plays rugby now, for example, it is not a solo adventure and he usually is accompanied by his wife Rachel and/ or daughters, Alex, 29, and Daphne, 11, and/or his son, Finley, 8. Having his family so involved in the sport is not sometimes without its challenges, however.

Virgil Russell, 52, of Indialantic, tries to fend off an attempted tackler. He joined the local Brevard Old Red Eye Rugby Club in 1989 and still loves to meet the physical demands of the game. He continues to turn out for home matches when he knows the club will need extra fill-in players.

“I played in a match a few years ago where this young enthusiastic player in his 20s was giving the pregame speech,” Russell said. “Needless to say, his talk was rather salty. My young daughter, Daphne, who was about 8 at the time, was listening to this guy’s every word and later she said his talk was the coolest thing she had ever

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“We treat our volunteers as if they were paid associates,” Boccabella said. “They are a major part of our family. It’s a wonderful feeling people can get when they give back to something larger than themselves.”

Boccabella said there are about 130 volunteers at Cape Canaveral Hospital, 110 at Palm Bay Hospital and 185 at Viera Hospital. (Additionally, there are more than 150 volunteers at Health First’s Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne).

While there are more teenagers volunteering at Viera Hospital, Boccabella said a large majority of volunteers at Cape Canaveral Hospital (about 90 heard. That was not quite my finest moment as a dad.”

Russell still occasionally turns out for home matches for the Brevard Old Red Eye Rugby Club — the team for which he has played for the past 34 years except for a six-year stint where he lived and played rugby overseas — when he knows a few extra fill-in players will be needed. The majority of his rugby activities these days are in Masters Rugby — which is generally a little more social and less competitive than the game played by younger players.

Very often at Masters Rugby Tournaments, sides are split into categories of 35-and-older teams, 50-and-older teams and 60-and-older teams (usually this oldest division is no longer a full-contact activity and almost totally a social event). One such Masters Rugby Tournament that Russell is looking forward to is the World Masters Rugby Classic scheduled to take place Oct. 20 to 26 in Orlando. Eighty masters rugby teams from all over the world will be invading Orlando that week and Russell expects that he will be an integral part of organizing masters rugby players from the two local rugby teams (Brevard Old Red Eye and the now-defunct Space Coast Rugby Club) to form a side to play in this event.

“This is a major event that is coming right into our backyard next year and we have many former players excited to participate,” said Corkey Newman, president of the Brevard Old Red Eye Rugby Club.

For more information about the Old Brevard Red Eye Rugby Club, visit brevardrugby.com. For more information about the World Masters Rugby Classic, visit worldmastersrugby. com. SL percent) and Palm Bay Hospital (about 80 percent) are retired seniors. Boccabella highlighted that Health First volunteers are entitled to great benefits, such as an application fee waiver at Health First’s Pro-Health & Fitness in Viera; free drinks from the cafeteria during their shift; and 25 percent off cafeteria and gift shop purchases.

Additionally, after 90 days, insured volunteers who become inpatient admittances at any Health First hospital or facility will have 50% of their out-ofpocket expenses picked up by the health system.

For more information or to apply to volunteer at a Health First hospital, visit hf.org/ volunteer SL