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Newberg's Lynne Tucker has learned to love rugby, & it shows.

10/13/2015, 11:45am PDT
By admin

Lynne Tucker would have been forgiven if she had stepped away from coaching young men’s rugby at Newberg High. 

She’d been coming to practices and games for four years, tracking the progress of her son, Brad, who started playing as a freshman at Newberg and graduated in this spring. Brad now attends Montana State, where he plays Number 8 for the university team. Lynne would like to be able to continue to watch him play regularly.

Instead, she still can be found on the sideline at Newberg, encouraging her players to run, tackle, pass and most of all, enjoy the sport she’s fallen in love with. She says she is heartened not just when her most experienced players perform well, but when her new players gain confidence on the pitch.

“I’ve seen boys with no sports experience blossom,” she said by phone this month. “I’ve seen them find a home.”

She won’t call it a rebuilding year at Newberg, but the team graduated 11 players and now has 20 young men, freshmen to senior, of various levels of skill and experience. Many, she said, are beginners.

But you wouldn’t know it from watching the players interact with each other, their opponents, the refs and their coach. Nor from their 3-2-1 record as of Oct. 13.

“She is awesome,” said Neil Cooper, coach of Lincoln High School. “"Her boys are good, well-coached and clean players. Lynne loves her players like they are her own sons.”

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. Lynne was startled by her first exposure to rugby, as boys raced around the field, flying into tackles and straining for advantage in clenches of bodies.

“But as I gained a perception of what rugby is -- how to tackle, how to pass -- it took the fear away,” she said. “It’s a physical sport that, when played correctly, is safe.”

Lynne’s natural enthusiasm was nurtured by Rick Rogers, the well-respected coach of Newberg’s spring rugby team. “He’s been my Yoda,” Lynne said with a laugh. “I got lucky for Rick to be my mentor.”

She said it hasn’t been particularly difficult to manage a bunch of young men, even if there are moments when a player falls short of the team’s high standards for good sportsmanship.

“I think it’s the mom in me,” she said. “I tell them ‘Everything I do represents the team, and every choice affects the team and affects me.’

“They’ve all been really good,” she hastened to add.

John Fletcher, who coaches Prairie High School, is another Lynne Tucker fan. Her upbeat attitude, he said, “reminds me of an employment quote I really like and it's so true.  ‘Hire the attitude and teach the skill.’”

Lynne keeps returning to rugby’s effects on the young men she coaches.

She said rugby’s most unexpected effect has been to take boys who initially lacked confidence, but came to feel included and began to discover something they liked about being part of the sport. Her voice warmed as she described a young player who recently scored his first try and “was floating on the field.”

“It’s a great culture,” she said. “I get so much out of it.”

And, in Newberg, it gets so much out of her.

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