What USC Rugby means to you - Jeff Bundschu '90
Dominic Riebli
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at USC Rugby. I’ve asked some distinguished alums to share their thoughts on their time at SC. Here is the first installment of the series from Jeff Bundschu ’90. I’ve known Jeff practically my entire life and he and my eldest brother are close friends. You couldn’t meet a nicer gentleman. If you’re ever in Sonoma, please visit Gundlach Bundschu Winery.
To help USC Rugby build memories like Jeff’s, please contribute to our fundraising campaign (link here).
From: Jeff Bundschu [mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2018 1:59 PM
To: Dominic Riebli <dominic...@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: What USC Rugby means to you
Hey Dom,
Man- seeing your note below after re-reading my letter, it might just be that if someone asks the same question to this year’s players 30 years from now, they would get something very similar. Fight On!
Jeff Bundschu, Class of 90
Real and/or or reimagined, rugby was an extremely pivotal part of my experience at USC.
I am from a long line of proud Cal Bears in Northern California. My dad enthusiastically took me to football games growing up in the hopes I would catch the bug and continue the tradition. That turned out to be a major strategic misstep. Instead of being wowed by the energy of Sproul Plaza or awed by the majesty of Memorial Stadium, I was distressed by the woeful football team.
I played sports all through school, and while I wasn’t great, I always wanted to win. That adolescent predisposition didn’t bode well for the home team against any Pac 10 opponent, and USC was the worst. Each year’s game, with the dominating teams, cheery-no-matter-what fans, and the most beautiful cheerleaders in the world, was a nail in the coffin of my dad’s aspirations for me. I wanted what those kids were having. When the time came I applied early admit to USC and never looked back.
The great thing about USC, especially for a kid from a small town, is its size and diversity. There was something for everyone, and for people like me, every part of everyone. In high school I played sports and was slightly artsy. At college I was determined to reverse the order. I grew my hair out, joined a band, and barely went to the gym. By junior year though I was missing the exertion and camaraderie of team sports and started looking for an outlet.
Fortuitously I saw a Rugby flier. Other than tackling without pads, I knew nothing of the game, but did know, unlike at (national contender at the time) Cal and other big schools, USC football players weren’t allowed to play rugby for fear of injury. That fact, and that they even had to post a flier boosted my confidence in terms of playing time and surviving. I walked on the practice pitch that first day to a UN of teammates, coached by a mountain of an ancient South African man that I’d come to believe ate nails for breakfast in his younger days. The global reach of Rugby was immediately apparent, and it would turn out to be athletic and cultural immersion. None of the other Americans on the team had played much either, so I had that going for me.
After I survived the first game and got to the keg I was hooked. The aggression, the teamwork, the camaraderie- even with the opposing team- and the songs all resonated. It was like I was home, but on another expanded planet. I played hooker and admittedly never quite got beyond the spectacle of the game through to the ‘see the ball, be the ball’ part. Every game I played I was all too conscious of the fact that I was about to dangle from the shoulders of men who out-weighed me by 100 pounds and would soon thereafter be chasing down and/or locking heads with the other team’s version thereof.
But the adrenaline rush would take over, and I’d start playing for my life, and because I had life. I think rugby, with its pacing and teamwork, it’s combination of elegant speed and close-quarters combat, and the humility and celebration of both sides together after the match, might just be the highest form of male evolution. At least that part that us that way deep down that is predisposed to ambition and battle. But rugby isn’t played to the death and you sing arm in arm with your foe afterwards, win or lose. If only all conflicts could be solved that way.
Alas, the USC rugby team in the late 80’s ended up being very Cal Bears-esque. Our inexperienced and undersized team was continually pounded (at least as I recall it), by schools whose overall athletic programs where more like my high school’s than USC’s. And somehow the cheerleading squad lost our game schedule.
But the twilight practices, in those days at Cromwell Field in the middle of campus, were magic. Our little posse, from as many countries and academic disciplines as you could find anywhere on campus, practiced hard and laughed a lot while the mortals outside the fence automaton-ed their way to and from class. I learned about the game and the world on the that pitch. And discipline. Invariably we’d be practicing and guffawing with coach and team, while track team athletes (as in the ‘real’, NCAA elite kind), after their own organized practices, would be rigorously working their own programs around the edges, alone.
Come game time we’d roll into Pomona, Northridge or Occidental or Fullerton, with the fight song blaring in our heads, knowing but not fearing that the mere sight of the cardinal and gold inspired a stone-cold hatred and rage in our opponents. They knew deep down they would never win a national football championship or Heisman trophy, or consort with heavenly cheerleaders or sorority girls who looked like them. They would never share alumni status with the likes of the Duke, George Lucas, or Rob Kardashian. And they could certainly never lay claim to living on the same streets that inspired ‘Straight outa Compton’ and ‘Funky Cold Medina’.
For our part we were invincible, or so I thought at first. It was as if I was donning the shield of Troy itself when I first pulled that jersey over my head. Certainly, I would run faster, jump higher and tackle harder in those colors, as would my teammates who actually started out with some talent.
So, in the name of undersexed engineers and academically overachieving high school football players everywhere, and with the tape on their ears already bloodied by the pre-game war chant, our opponents would bring the rage, and we’d meet them with our smiles, clean jerseys and Benetton good looks.
Undeniably it was unsettling at first. It was not fun being beaten, repeatedly. And it was a stark lesson that the fancy ski suit in the lodge does not a shredder make. But we were soon beyond that and came to relish each game and our reputation as scrappy. It was rare for any intercollegiate USC team to be a perpetual underdog, and we howled at the moon.
After all, we all knew what Trojans everywhere have always known, athletic or not. That whatever happens in the battle, chances are better than most that we will win the war.
Fight On.