Claremont
The art, as well as the hands that produced it, belong to Troy Spencer, who somehow made his way from Claremont to Texas, where the 32-year-old recently was a member of the USA Rugby national club champion Austin Huns.
Spencer’s trip to Austin had a few stops along the way, but rugby was the driving force. He played linebacker and fullback at Stevens but got the rugby bug while playing the game at Curry College in Milton, Mass.
“It’s like playing football without the equipment,” said Spencer. “It’s not for sissies. The no-pads thing didn’t scare me.”
While there are similarities to football, rugby is played with 15 men a side, and players do not leave the pitch during a change of possession. While each team has eight substitutes, once a player leaves the game, which has 40-minute halves, he cannot return.
Austin won the USA Rugby Division I men’s club championship, 27-23, beating the New York Athletic Club last month in a game played in Glendale, Colo.
Spencer played hooker or flanker, positions that put the Stevens grad in front of the line after breaking out from the scrum, where players from each side push, shove and tackle for possession of the ball.
“You are just sore all over after the game,” said Spencer. “All of which is why most teams have no players with flat noses.”
When Spencer graduated from Stevens in 2002, he spent a year at Plymouth State University before transferring to Curry. At Stevens, he played baseball and basketball in addition to football.
“He was a dedicated hustler,” said Gordon Dansereau, Spencer’s basketball coach at Stevens and now the athletic director at Fall Mountain Regional High School. “He was a super nice guy who would go through a wall for you — stocky, hard-nosed and very coachable.”
Paul Silva, who was coaching youth football when Spencer was in town, remembered him as a hard worker who would do anything for his teammates. “I always knew he was always going to give me everything he had,” said Silva, now the Stevens football and baseball coach. “Great kid.”
Following his graduation from Curry, Spencer — who is a graphic artist — was working in Maine where his parents lived, and he met some of the rugby players from a Portland team who talked about the Texas league. “So I just packed a bag and moved there on a whim,” Spencer said.
Rugby is a big deal in Texas, and Spencer’s Austin team usually played once a week starting in December with the championship game played in June. The Huns won the Red River Conference with a 9-1 record, which enabled them to qualify for the playoffs.
The Huns then beat San Francisco in the quarterfinals and Long Beach, Calif., in the semifinals, setting up the championship game with the New York side, a five-time national champion.
Austin trailed, 23-17, with eight minutes left. However, that was enough time for the Huns to pull out the win, the first not only for a Texas team, but the first for the Huns in their 45-year history.
Professional rugby is not anywhere near the money-making level of other pro sports, and all the players have to have full-time jobs; Spencer is a graphic artist for a firm that has 97,000 employees around the world. Some of the players make around $25,000 a year, and others, like Spencer, get per-game checks in the $200-$300 range. Each team has a full coaching staff, including strength and conditioning coaches and medical personnel. Spencer added that his team, which plays on a 70- by 100-meter field, gets between 800 and 900 fans per game. Ticket prices are in the $15 to $20 range. Spencer also is listed as a member of the Huns’ board of directors.
Spencer came back to Claremont for the first time in five years last summer to spend time with his grandparents as well as meet up with his parents, who came down from Maine. “I went for a run and saw what wonderful changes were made at Monadnock Park. It was great,” he said. “I miss that small-town community feeling.”