JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- Lt. Col. John McQuade can easily crossover from the mentality of being the deputy commander of the 627th Air Base Group at Joint Base Lewis-McChord to coaching the All-Air Force rugby team. In his mind, success comes from people buying into the mantra of “why.”
“If we can all see the same ‘why,’ maybe satisfying those objectives becomes clearer,” said McQuade.
For the last three years, the All-Air Force rugby team has finished in second place to the All-Army rugby team. The Air Force lost to the Army team in last year’s Armed Forces Rugby Championship 43-12 as one of the pools for the Serevi Rugbytown Sevens tournament.
Since then, McQuade said the All-Air Force rugby program has been reinvigorated in an effort to build a stronger team for this year’s Armed Forces Rugby Tournament Saturday and Sunday at Infinity Park in Glendale, Colorado. The first step was getting younger Airmen excited about rugby with its return as an Olympic sport for the first time since the 1920s.
The second step was having the All-Air Force team compete in civilian-run tournaments over the last year.
“We’re looking at different playing combinations, but also (want) to integrate some of our older players to work with those younger players in helping them get comfortable with playing at the armed forces tournament,” said McQuade.
McQuade also said he hopes the players will have a short memory after last year’s tournament when they took silver in the armed forces pool and then lost in the Serevi Rugbytown Cup quarterfinals to the Serevi Selects, 29-7, followed by a 36-0 loss to the Northeast Academy from Boston.
Before the Air Force sevens team competes as one of the 20 teams in the Serevi Rugbytown Sevens tournament — which features a $10,000 winner-takes-all prize — McQuade spent this week evaluating 18 Airmen at the trial camp held in Denver.
The final roster for the tournament will be 12 players. While sevens rugby is a game looking for a perfect combination of size, strength and speed, the most important skill McQuade is looking for in his team is cohesion.
“If I’ve got seven guys that may not be the fastest or strongest, but they know how to play with each other in a way that looks like they are functioning on the same page, then that’s what I’m looking for,” he said. “I want to have seven, or maybe eight, nine or 10 guys where I feel I can put any combination on the field and be OK with how they’re interacting with each other.”
The armed forces championship pool play will take place Friday and continue until Saturday, when the armed forces championship is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. The knockout stages will continue through Saturday and into Sunday.
Games will be streamed live on infinityparkatglendale.com/2015/Rugbytown-7s/.