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Warning: Wolfpack can't be stopped
According to the Motion Picture Association of America, PG-13-rated blockbusters like “The Dark Night” and “Hancock” may not be suitable for any of these boys.
It warns parents of violence, mature themes and adult activities.
But these boys, the 10- to 12-year-olds who make up the Warrenton Wolfpack U-13 youth rugby club, have faced the like this summer without the comfort of a cushy theater chair. And they've handled it admirably.
They’ve quickly learned a game foreign to most American children — one normally left unnoticed until men reach college.
They've felt the pain involved in the sport that shares some violent aspects of football, only without the pads — bled from kicks to the shins and endured knees to the head.
They've even seen the unexpected and unthinkable — the death of a coach.
The latter happened just four weeks ago. The boys witnessed assistant coach Mark "Gunner" Jones collapse on their practice field at the American Legion Post 72 in Warrenton. He had a seizure or heart attack — Wolfpack coaches said it's still unclear which without a coroner's report — at the end of a Thursday practice.
“It was kind of scary," 12-year-old Leif Heltzel said after a game this past weekend.
"It was pretty traumatizing for the kids," said Greg Hicks, head coach of the first-year Warrenton team.
The boys were ushered off the practice field by their parents and over to the parking lot while coaches including Hicks and assistant Bob Elliot stayed with their fallen friend.
Jones, 34, was taken away by ambulance and soon after pronounced dead at the hospital.
"It was awful," said Elliot, a close friend of Jones since playing rugby with him at George Mason University. "But the way we look at it, he loved rugby, he was giving back to the kids and he died doing what he loved to do. And that’s cool."
The Wolfpack boys seem to share that sentiment. At Jones' funeral, they signed a rugby ball for their coach and placed one of his jerseys in a shadow box. And in another tribute of sorts, they've played inspired rugby since his death, as Elliot put it.
They play: "For Coach Gunner," Heltzel said.
On a roll
Two days after Jones collapsed on the practice field, his Warrenton team went out for a Saturday game against fellow Rugby Virginia league team Springfield. The Wolfpack won by an astounding margin, their greatest of the season, 95-5.
But they've also posted phenomenal scores against other opponents, like a 63-17 win over Chantilly, a 68-24 win over Vienna and, most recently, a 47-5 win over Springfield this past Saturday.
"It’s been pretty one-sided matches and Greg and I aren’t popular among the other coaches as a result," Elliot said.
"A lot of teams thought they were going to be the top of the league this year and we came out of nowhere," said Hicks, who began the rugby team as an extension of his Warrenton Wolfpack Youth Football program — which consists of American Youth Football teams Mighty Mights, Junior Pewees and Pewees — to keep his kids working together in early summer before they're allowed to begin practice as a football team in July.
In fact, at 5-0, the Wolfpack is first in the Rugby Virginia league despite being a first-year team with a roster full of inexperienced players...See the Wednesday print edition of the Fauquier Times-Democrat for the complete story.
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