Lets Scrum-ble
Serious Injury Draws Attention To Local Rugby Scene
By Eric Poole

Ultimately, Eric Golacinski was betrayed by his instincts.

"Run faster! Hit harder!" the Shaler High School senior's impulse, honed by years as a linebacker, impelled him to top speed—he was timed at 4.8 seconds in the 40-yard dash—as he closed in on a Fox Chapel High School ball carrier.

In the two years since Shaler joined the Pittsburgh Harlequins Rugby Football Association's high school rugby league, the Titans and Foxes had become archrivals. The situation that was only heightened with an altercation in the teams' first 2002 meeting. On May 17, the day of their second meeting, Golacinski tore into the runner, and immediately knew something was wrong. For an instant, Golacinski's world disappeared into a flash of light and a stabbing pain ran down his left side.

Again, the 17-year-old's instincts kicked in, offering potentially fatal counsel.

"Get up! You're not hurt!"

Rugby Proud

Amidst some difficult circumstances, 2001 furnished the national and local rugby community with some proud moments.

Mark Bingham, a forward for the San Francisco Fog and a player on three national college championship squads at Cal Berkely, is believed to have been a leader of the band of passengers who rushed the cockpit on United Airlines Flight 93. That same morning, Sean Lugano, Mark Ludvigsen and Brent Woodall—members of the New York Athletic Club team that finished second to San Mateo (Calif.) in the national Division I Final Four tournament at Founders Field in Indiana Township—went to work at the investment banking firm of Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, located on floors 86-89 of the World Trade Center. All three died that day.

Founders Field, run by the Harlequins is universally regarded as the best rugby facility in the United States. This year, San Mateo repeated as Division I champion.

But the true winner might have been the Harlequins, whose home pitch again earned rave reviews by visitors from across the nation. The club uses funds generated by hosting the national championships and the sale of memberships to local athletic organization to support its youth rugby program, including the high school league.

"This is the best rugby tournament in the country," says Al Russo, the Harlequins club president. "This has actually become a goal for teams now because they know what it means.

"I get two e-mails and two phone calls a week asking, 'How do you do it?'"

The answer to that question can be found in both the Harlequins' clubhouse and corporate boardrooms throughout the city.

As a first step, the Harlequins raised more than $35,000 from its own club members. That seed money convinced the local business community that the club was serious about starting the youth program.

And it didn't hurt the Harlequins' cause when Anthony Jonathan Francis O'Reilly—Tony to his pals in corporate Pittsburgh—lent his name to the effort.

The former CEO of Heinz was not only a decent cricket player, but also one of the greatest rugby players ever. O'Reilly played for the Irish national team from 1955, when he was 18 years old, until 1974, when his commitments to Heinz cut too deeply into his training time. He threw the Harlequins an assist in building the $1.2-million facility by allowing his name to be used in fund-raising information.

"Nobody ever said, 'We're donating because Tony O'Reilly's name is on it," says Bill Schildnecht, coordinator of the Harlequins' youth program and a practicing attorney. "But it lent us the credibility that we're not a bunch of beer-drinking rugby players from off the street."

The entire purpose of the youth program was to promote rugby among youth, with teaching the game more important than winning.

During a Canevin-Sto-Rox match in 1997, the first year of high school rugby in the Pittsburgh area, referee Mark Connolly stopped play to offer instruction during a scrum that had gotten dangerous.

"This is how people get paralyzed," he said. "The scrum is the most important part of rugby, so lets get it right."

Near Disaster

Eric Golacinski didn't know it at the time, but the blow fractured the C-3 vertebra in his neck and knocked it almost completely off his C-4 verterbra. Incredibly, he stood up and played for another 20 minutes.

"I saw all the physical tools, as well as the mental attitude," says Walter Elder, Golacinski's rugby coach at Shaler. "He's really an inspiring kid."

At Shaler, Golacinski played flanker and number 8, the two rugby positions most similar to linebacker.

Flankers and 8s are the commandos of rugby. They are expected to get to breakdowns first, both on offense and defense, with speed and courage. As for that last item, there's no doubt Golacinski was, if anything, overqualified. He played 20 minutes of one of the toughest contact sports in the world with a broken neck.

At halftime, Golacinski stopped moving long enough for the pain to catch up. He told Elder he needed to come out of the match, and assured the coach that he had likely aggravated a shoulder injury he sustained in football. Because of the altercation during the previous meeting between Shaler and Fox Chapel, Elder decided to keep his eyes on the field.

Negative Light

Up until halftime, everything that had happened to Golacinski was unfortunate, but were things that could have—and does—happen in football games throughout the country every year. However, what happened next cast a negative light on the Harlequins.

"He was over on the sidelines and he said, 'I'll be all right, Mom,'" says Lauri Golacinski. "I went back up to where I was standing and no one approached him. No one came near him."

When she returned 30 minutes later, Lauri said Eric was in extreme agony—"growling in pain," in her words—and she decided to drive her son to the hospital. One big problem Lauri has with that 30-minute time period is that there were no medical personnel and no ambulance on site. She admits that her son's injury was an accident, probably an unavoidable one, but, citing the events of the previous Shaler-Fox Chapel match and the lack of medical attention for Eric, Lauri called the injury an accident waiting to happen.

"There's no part of the sportsmanship of rugby in these matches, she says. "It's not taught the way it's supposed to be taught, it's not played the way it's supposed to be played."

The Flip Side

Another rugby parent—U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle—has a different opinion of the Harlequins' program. The congressman's son, Kevin, played rugby for three seasons at Woodland Hills High School. The Swissvale Democrat says he was more nervous when his son was wrestling, another sport he competed in at the varsity level.

"My experience was that the league was well-organized," says Mike Doyle. "There were officials, and good officials, at all of the games and it was well-controlled. It seemed to me that the officials were not only making the calls properly, but they were explaining what went wrong."

When the Shaler School Board voted unanimously last August to cut its ties with the Harlequins and eliminate rugby at the school, that left five boys high school teams in the club's fold: Canevin, Fox Chapel, Schenley, Sto-Rox and Woodland Hills. There are also four girls varsity teams: Canevin, Carrick, Fox Chapel and Schenley.

None of the remaining schools have given any indication that they plan to drop rugby, says Schildnecht.

During the August meeting, Shaler School Board member James Fisher said he would be willing to consider reinstating the sport if some changes are made, including the addition of medical personnel on the sidelines during matches.

Schildnecht is already working on that. More than 70 club members are certified as coaches by the U.S.A. Rugby Football Union, the sport's governing body in this country. All of the coaches are trained in CPR. In other words, there is a higher standard for high school rugby coaches in southwestern Pennsylvania than for their football counterparts.

The Road Back

For Golacinski, things have worked out almost as well as could have been expected. Doctors at UPMC St. Margaret Hospital in Aspinwall quickly diagnosed him and stabilized his broken neck for transportation to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. There surgeons almost literally reattached Golacinski's head by fusing a piece of hip bone to his neck and putting the whole thing together with plates and screws.

"The surgeon said a slight push more on it and it would have slipped off," says Lauri Golacinski. "And he would have been dead."

In June, less than a month after he almost died, Golacinski—wearing a halo brace to stabilize his injured neck—took the graduation walk with his class at Shaler. Now, the University of Pittsburgh freshman, his halo brace removed, has only an angry scar on his neck as a reminder of his injury. He is through competing in contact sports, but would like to keep his hand in football.

"I'd love to go into coaching," says Golacinski, who is helping out this fall with a pee-wee football team coached by his girlfriend's father. "I'd love to be a defensive coordinator. I'm pretty good with defense."

All he needs to do is find a way to coach instinct.

Eric Poole is a freelance writer based in Elwood city.