From the gridiron to the pitch

Tony Gobern was at his Washington football pro day last spring when a man he did not know approached him. He offered Gobern a choice: if professional football did not work out, why not try something new? Why not try rugby? Thirteen months later, Gobern has not looked back. That conversation began a whirlwind of a year for Gobern, a 2013 graduate of the UW and former cornerback on the UW football team. It took him a few months to warm up to the idea, but he finally embraced it last August. Now, after nine months, Gobern is fully hooked. “The cool thing about it is there’s a wide demographic of people who play rugby,” Gobern said. “It ranges not only from all ages but from people all across the world. It’s a global deal, and it’s cool that it’s over in America, and that’s another reason why I want to grow it, show everybody that this is a cool sport, you can have a lot of fun, and play for a long time, and enjoy it. I love talking about rugby.” Of course, his passion for rugby developed out of a passion for football. Gobern played on both sides of the football and ran track at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, Calif., just outside of Sacramento. From there, he was recruited by a number of schools to play cornerback, including Oregon, Cal, and Air Force. However, he chose Tyrone Willingham’s UW program. “I kind of chose to go to the University of Washington for a couple of reasons,” Gobern said. “One, because Willingham was a great coach, and two, it was a great opportunity for me to travel and go somewhere entirely new and different.” After spending two years as a special teams regular for the Huskies, who were then led by Steve Sarkisian, Gobern began to see more action on defense his junior year. He made 13 tackles his junior year, and 11 his senior year, but a professional football career did not seem likely for Gobern, leading him off the gridiron and onto the pitch. Gobern attended a camp, after beginning to play in August, hosted by Serevi Rugby, an organization devoted to helping rugby grow in the United States. It was founded by Waisale Serevi, a famed rugby sevens (7-on-7 as opposed to 15-on-15) player from Fiji. He partnered with former England international player Ben Gollings, and the program settled in Seattle. Gobern initially started playing with a local team, Seattle OPSB. He wanted to improve his game, and was told about the Serevi program by one of its coaches, Justin Fitzpatrick. Working with Serevi paid immediate dividends for Gobern. He said the extra training improved his mental game, physical game, and fundamentals. “I’m a youth in the game,” Gobern said. “This is my first year, so I’ve learned a lot of fundamentals that have pushed me even further. Those things I was kind of doing on my own, learning on the fly, I was able to go to a whole day camp and learn the tips and tricks that I can replay in my head over and over again.” Over his first few months playing rugby, Gobern said he had a lot of difficulties picking up the game. He says the hardest adjustment he had to make was with his fitness. He would get winded quickly, and ended games and practices exhausted. But Gobern quickly overcame those challenges, among others. While learning all the rules of an entirely new game takes time, Gobern was able to do so with help from Serevi and OPSB coaches, and a lot of time. The work that he has put in has made an impact not just on Gobern’s ability, but on his coaches. And not only has Gobern impressed his coaches at Serevi, he has also worked his way onto the radar of U.S. sevens national team coaches. “He’s been down with the U.S. and been at one of our camps in front of the U.S. coaches,” said Gollings, who played professionally for 14 years. “We know they had a good eye on him. The great thing is Tony has a great focus, and I believe he’ll achieve his goals because of that focus.” The inclusion of rugby sevens in the 2016 Olympics means that Gobern’s switch to the sport is coming just at the right time. Despite his lack of rugby experience, Gobern has impressed Gollings enough that the former star for the England sevens side believes Gobern has a realistic shot of making the U.S. team in the near future. “It hasn’t happened in the past that a rugby athlete has the opportunity at an Olympic medal, being involved in the Olympics,” Gollings said. “For Tony, he’s very close to that position. He has all the physical athletic attributes to be able to play at that level, so that’s why he’s working with us.” While the story of Gobern’s switch is intriguing, it’s not exactly unique. U.S. sevens head coach Matt Hawkins estimates that he receives one or two emails a day from athletes who have played traditional American sports and are interested in rugby. And Hawkins does not discriminate against these players either. “As far as I’m concerned, an athlete’s an athlete,” Hawkins said. “These are guys that have developed their skills as an athlete in a certain box, whether it be football, track and field, whatever. Now, that box has become too small, or there is no more left in that box, and they want to jump to another box and still use that athletic talent and ability they have because they still have that passion, that drive to compete.” Gobern is nothing if not an athlete, one who is capable of competing at a very high level. He still plays for the OPSB 15s team, which lost Saturday in the British Columbia Rugby Union final. And he has lofty goals, mainly becoming a consistent player for the U.S. squad. Gobern says his next steps are finishing his first sevens season and a residency program at Serevi’s USA Rugby Academy in Glendale, Colo., in August. He also says that he wants to travel and play, possibly in Australia or New Zealand, but, as he puts it, “You can go anywhere with it.” “I want to be able to travel and play this game across the world,” Gobern said. “Being able to play internationally too, it doesn’t have to stop with being on the USA squad. There are opportunities to play all over the world.” Reach Sports Editor Daniel Rubens at sports@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @drubens12

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