For some years now Kevin Bunce Sr. has been shepherding young rugby players living throughout eastern Long Island with the aim not only to avail them of college scholarships, but also with an eye toward reviving the Montauk Rugby Club, whose home games used to be played every spring and fall at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park.
There are about a dozen locals, the most in recent memory, playing for Bunce and Mike Jablonski in regional 7s tournaments now, a group that includes George Calderon, Kevin Bunce Jr., Christian Johnson (whose older brother, Brandon, is playing with the semipro Austin Huns in Texas), Hudson Brindle, Skylar Minardi, Morgan Grant, Ricky Ortiz, Finn Byrnes, Charlie Corwin, Josh King, Jordan Johnson, Craig Jablonski of Mattituck, and Rob Lechner of Northport.
“We’ve been playing up, in the open men’s divisions, in these tournaments,” the elder Bunce said at The Star recently. “We’ve been pummeled a couple of times, but it’s the best way for them to learn.”
Some of Bunce and Jablonski’s charges have been learning the hard way. “You can’t reach into a ruck, and our younger players have often been doing that,” Bunce said of a binding formation around the ball following a tackle. “You get a yellow card and one minute on the sideline for infractions now. Sometimes we’ve been down to five guys because of penalties for minor things, but our tackling and running have been awesome our level of fitness is terrific.”
The Montauk Rugby side went 1-4 in its first tourney, in Rockaway, in June. “We won our first match and then got beat pretty good,” said Bunce. “They were really sore and beat up afterward, but they were excited. . . . We played in the Suffolk Bull Moose tournament at Heckscher Park in July, and again we put them in the men’s bracket, with sides from Brooklyn, Queens, and the New York City Police Department. We ran great, had some good tackles, and a few wins. We wanted to have a 7s tournament here at Herrick Park. But the teams we wanted couldn’t come out. We’ll be going to the New York 7s tournament on Randalls Island at Thanksgiving, and next year, in April, we want to bring a U-23 team down to Tampa. It’s a big tournament; we’ll try to make some waves.”
In parting, Bunce said, “We’re trying our best to keep Montauk Rugby alive. It will be 50 years in 2023. Not many clubs have been around that long. But you’ve got to keep the ball rolling. Ryan Gallop ran our practice the other night. He’s living in San Diego now and playing with the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club, just like a lot of us did — Kelly Dolan, John Kalbacher, Roger Miller, Tim Sweeney, Jesse Zenger, Frank Bistrian, and me. . . . Our kids are picking it up real fast. Some of them are already getting college offers. Rugby can be a pathway to the top. If they learn the basics and do well in school, they can get into college and wind up playing at high levels nationally and internationally.”