A BRIEF UMF RUGBY CLUB HISTORY
"The most impressive thing about UMF’s rugby program over the past 23 years is not,
however, trophies past teams have won or even the reputation our program now has. Rather, it is the
contribution UMF ruggers have made over the years to the sport of rugby in our state."
-Woody Hanstein, 2013
On the first Saturday in September of 1991, a group of about 15 mostly UMF students (and a
few folks from town who were allowed to play in the club’s first few years) gathered on Prescott Field in
response to flyers posted looking to start a local rugby team. Only two or three in the entire group had
ever played in a rugby match, and most of the rest had never even seen the sport or handled a rugby
ball in their lives. The backbone of that original crew was three former Mt. Blue High School football
players -- Kevin Joyce (the team’s first captain), Jon Downing and Scott Stinchcomb and they were
joined by now long-time UMF rugby mainstays Shannon Scott and Tom Marcotte among many others.
That first season the UMF club traveled around the state, mostly playing the B-sides of already
established Maine college teams, and the highlight of that first fall’s campaign was a win over Maine
Maritime Academy’s A-side in our final match. It was our first home game ever (played on the narrow
Hippach football field), our first home social (hosted in my garage on Greenwood Avenue) and, from my
vantage point wearing the #6 jersey, it was a spirited beginning to rugby at the University of Maine at
Farmington.
A number of UMF rugby traditions got started that first season that are still with us. When we
were getting ready to travel to Bates for our first match we called Rugby Imports to order jerseys, but
the only ones they had in stock were solid green with a broad gold chest hoop – colors we still wear
today. When a team song seemed necessary to prepare for our first socials, Kevin Joyce adapted the
song his University of Buffalo team sang – something which also has not left us.
The following season UMF began playing other college A-sides, and our standard of play
increased to the point that in November of 1994 we toured England and Scotland, playing four full
matches in eight brutal days (the matches were tough too) and forming some close friendships with
players at Border Park in the north of England that still last until today. Touring seemed to agree with
UMF rugby players and we followed that tour up with one to Ireland in 1996 and then tours back to
England and Scotland in 2000 and again in 2004. The watchword of any good rugby tour (“what
happens on tour, stays on tour”) will, by all means, be honored here, but I think it is fair to say that
memories of those trips are precious to anyone who had the chance to make them. Our friends from
Border Park came to play UMF here in Farmington in late-summer of 2001 and the team from Holmes
Chapel, England visited us in 2005 – two long weekends of rafting, rugby, and drunken Scotsmen in kilts
that will also be fondly remembered.
The one tour that never really happened also deserves mention before we leave that topic.
With no disrespect to the many outstanding players who came before them, it was the best and most
complete team of UMF rugby players ever assembled who gathered at 6 am at Logan Airport in April
of 2010 to fly out to England to begin the most ambitious tour in the club’s history. Unfortunately, the
Exjafallajokull volcano in Iceland had other ideas, because it chose that same day to begin spewing ash
so high and widely above the Northern Atlantic Ocean that air travel was impossible. The team made
the best of things, enjoying the posh digs of the Parker House in Boston (at the British Airlines expense,
god bless them) for two days and then later savoring a mini-tour into Canada as far as that country’s
border patrol station, but the great tour of 2010 never came off for anyone other than tourist Tyler
Jellison, who had beforehand been homing his rugby skills in Cambodia.
Between all this touring, the standard of play at UMF started to markedly improve. Players like
Tyler Jellison, Tony Solis, Mike Milliken and Chip Burnham and many others led teams that started to
regularly bring home hardware from events like the Spring Shorties Championship, the Maine Cup and
even Beast of the East. The pinnacle of UMF’s on the field accomplishments came in 2009 when the
team won its conference by dismantling undefeated Tufts and then running the NERFU play-off table:
first by destroying Holy Cross (in a match punctuated by a spectacular try on the opening kick-off to
us that went upfield through the hands of seven or eight UMF players before Taylor Steeves touched
down), then Bryant College (in a match that answered, in emphatic fashion, the question as to what
would happen when the host’s beloved crash-ball offense met UMF’s Taber Hammond and Dan and Ray
Linck-led defense) and then at Keene State in a nail-biter of a final won on a Josh McMahon try. That
championship team was captained by Ryan Nickerson, but everybody contributed and pictures of all of
them will hopefully be found at the end of these brief notes.
All of the players that helped win that 2010 NERFU Championship eventually moved on, but the
team didn’t spend too long rebuilding, winning the club’s fourth and fifth Maine Cup championships in
2011 and 2013, and just finishing this past fall season with a 4-2 record and second place in the seven-
team Maine conference. In the club’s formative years a 4-2 season like this past one would have been
hard to imagine, but thanks in large part to the tradition and continuity those first players instilled,
that recent result is mostly disappointing. Hopefully everyone who has played rugby in Farmington
over the years will appreciate and also take some credit for the high standard we now set and also the
reputation rugby at UMF now has. UMF has won five of the last seven Maine Cups, and I think we are
now recognized throughout the state for playing a style of rugby that is both free-flowing but also hard
hitting.
The most impressive thing about UMF’s rugby program over the past 23 years is not,
however, trophies past teams have won or even the reputation our program now has. Rather, it is the
contribution UMF ruggers have made over the years to the sport of rugby in our state. Nearly 15 years
ago former UMF players Kris Dubois, Shannon Scott and Jessie Jacobs started the Central Maine Stripers,
a vibrant summer team that played throughout New England and also toured and hosted Canadian
teams. For years the Stripers have both kept rugby alive for experienced players and also taught the
game to young players just learning the sport.
UMF rugby alumni have contributed in other ways too:
As players on top-level men’s teams -- Heke (somehow pronounced “Fuddy”) Whare, Pete
Bennett, Mike and Chris Kesl, Sean Fry, Mike Milliken, Taber Hammond and Gump Beaudet, just to
name a few.
And as coaches – Mike Milliken’s inaugural season at Bates saw his team nearly win the Maine
conference, and in Farmington, more and more, Tony Solis is doing much of the heavy UMF coaching lifting.
And as referees – a vital role Shannon Scott has filled throughout Maine for years and one that
the fast-rising Travis “Thirsty” Rowell should be taking to new heights.
And, finally, as innovators – at UMF we have shown the world the 2-man line-out, 3-ball touch
rugby, and 4-basket, 2-ball ultimate, among things too countless to list here. And we have made sure
that no player leaves the UMF campus without having first perfected the dummy and the pop-kick, and
that he sensibly shouts the warning “headache” instead of “head’s up.”
I know this note has only mentioned a few of the hundreds of people who I have had the great
pleasure of playing with and coaching here at UMF, but all you guys know who you are. With the help of
our current captain, Mark Garrido, I will try to include a few photos and other memorabilia in the hopes
those items will bring back some of everyone’s personal rugby memories.
Cheers,
Woody Hanstein
November 10, 2013
few folks from town who were allowed to play in the club’s first few years) gathered on Prescott Field in
response to flyers posted looking to start a local rugby team. Only two or three in the entire group had
ever played in a rugby match, and most of the rest had never even seen the sport or handled a rugby
ball in their lives. The backbone of that original crew was three former Mt. Blue High School football
players -- Kevin Joyce (the team’s first captain), Jon Downing and Scott Stinchcomb and they were
joined by now long-time UMF rugby mainstays Shannon Scott and Tom Marcotte among many others.
That first season the UMF club traveled around the state, mostly playing the B-sides of already
established Maine college teams, and the highlight of that first fall’s campaign was a win over Maine
Maritime Academy’s A-side in our final match. It was our first home game ever (played on the narrow
Hippach football field), our first home social (hosted in my garage on Greenwood Avenue) and, from my
vantage point wearing the #6 jersey, it was a spirited beginning to rugby at the University of Maine at
Farmington.
A number of UMF rugby traditions got started that first season that are still with us. When we
were getting ready to travel to Bates for our first match we called Rugby Imports to order jerseys, but
the only ones they had in stock were solid green with a broad gold chest hoop – colors we still wear
today. When a team song seemed necessary to prepare for our first socials, Kevin Joyce adapted the
song his University of Buffalo team sang – something which also has not left us.
The following season UMF began playing other college A-sides, and our standard of play
increased to the point that in November of 1994 we toured England and Scotland, playing four full
matches in eight brutal days (the matches were tough too) and forming some close friendships with
players at Border Park in the north of England that still last until today. Touring seemed to agree with
UMF rugby players and we followed that tour up with one to Ireland in 1996 and then tours back to
England and Scotland in 2000 and again in 2004. The watchword of any good rugby tour (“what
happens on tour, stays on tour”) will, by all means, be honored here, but I think it is fair to say that
memories of those trips are precious to anyone who had the chance to make them. Our friends from
Border Park came to play UMF here in Farmington in late-summer of 2001 and the team from Holmes
Chapel, England visited us in 2005 – two long weekends of rafting, rugby, and drunken Scotsmen in kilts
that will also be fondly remembered.
The one tour that never really happened also deserves mention before we leave that topic.
With no disrespect to the many outstanding players who came before them, it was the best and most
complete team of UMF rugby players ever assembled who gathered at 6 am at Logan Airport in April
of 2010 to fly out to England to begin the most ambitious tour in the club’s history. Unfortunately, the
Exjafallajokull volcano in Iceland had other ideas, because it chose that same day to begin spewing ash
so high and widely above the Northern Atlantic Ocean that air travel was impossible. The team made
the best of things, enjoying the posh digs of the Parker House in Boston (at the British Airlines expense,
god bless them) for two days and then later savoring a mini-tour into Canada as far as that country’s
border patrol station, but the great tour of 2010 never came off for anyone other than tourist Tyler
Jellison, who had beforehand been homing his rugby skills in Cambodia.
Between all this touring, the standard of play at UMF started to markedly improve. Players like
Tyler Jellison, Tony Solis, Mike Milliken and Chip Burnham and many others led teams that started to
regularly bring home hardware from events like the Spring Shorties Championship, the Maine Cup and
even Beast of the East. The pinnacle of UMF’s on the field accomplishments came in 2009 when the
team won its conference by dismantling undefeated Tufts and then running the NERFU play-off table:
first by destroying Holy Cross (in a match punctuated by a spectacular try on the opening kick-off to
us that went upfield through the hands of seven or eight UMF players before Taylor Steeves touched
down), then Bryant College (in a match that answered, in emphatic fashion, the question as to what
would happen when the host’s beloved crash-ball offense met UMF’s Taber Hammond and Dan and Ray
Linck-led defense) and then at Keene State in a nail-biter of a final won on a Josh McMahon try. That
championship team was captained by Ryan Nickerson, but everybody contributed and pictures of all of
them will hopefully be found at the end of these brief notes.
All of the players that helped win that 2010 NERFU Championship eventually moved on, but the
team didn’t spend too long rebuilding, winning the club’s fourth and fifth Maine Cup championships in
2011 and 2013, and just finishing this past fall season with a 4-2 record and second place in the seven-
team Maine conference. In the club’s formative years a 4-2 season like this past one would have been
hard to imagine, but thanks in large part to the tradition and continuity those first players instilled,
that recent result is mostly disappointing. Hopefully everyone who has played rugby in Farmington
over the years will appreciate and also take some credit for the high standard we now set and also the
reputation rugby at UMF now has. UMF has won five of the last seven Maine Cups, and I think we are
now recognized throughout the state for playing a style of rugby that is both free-flowing but also hard
hitting.
The most impressive thing about UMF’s rugby program over the past 23 years is not,
however, trophies past teams have won or even the reputation our program now has. Rather, it is the
contribution UMF ruggers have made over the years to the sport of rugby in our state. Nearly 15 years
ago former UMF players Kris Dubois, Shannon Scott and Jessie Jacobs started the Central Maine Stripers,
a vibrant summer team that played throughout New England and also toured and hosted Canadian
teams. For years the Stripers have both kept rugby alive for experienced players and also taught the
game to young players just learning the sport.
UMF rugby alumni have contributed in other ways too:
As players on top-level men’s teams -- Heke (somehow pronounced “Fuddy”) Whare, Pete
Bennett, Mike and Chris Kesl, Sean Fry, Mike Milliken, Taber Hammond and Gump Beaudet, just to
name a few.
And as coaches – Mike Milliken’s inaugural season at Bates saw his team nearly win the Maine
conference, and in Farmington, more and more, Tony Solis is doing much of the heavy UMF coaching lifting.
And as referees – a vital role Shannon Scott has filled throughout Maine for years and one that
the fast-rising Travis “Thirsty” Rowell should be taking to new heights.
And, finally, as innovators – at UMF we have shown the world the 2-man line-out, 3-ball touch
rugby, and 4-basket, 2-ball ultimate, among things too countless to list here. And we have made sure
that no player leaves the UMF campus without having first perfected the dummy and the pop-kick, and
that he sensibly shouts the warning “headache” instead of “head’s up.”
I know this note has only mentioned a few of the hundreds of people who I have had the great
pleasure of playing with and coaching here at UMF, but all you guys know who you are. With the help of
our current captain, Mark Garrido, I will try to include a few photos and other memorabilia in the hopes
those items will bring back some of everyone’s personal rugby memories.
Cheers,
Woody Hanstein
November 10, 2013
Maine Cup Champs 2014
Maine Cup Champs 2013
Maine Cup Champs 2011
UMF Men's Rugby Wins 2011 Maine Cup!
Back row (left to right): Derek "Gump" Beaudet, Timothy Englert, Conor Bogan, Brian Nolan, Frank Makuch, Joe Paine, Jake Roberts, Edgar Satterfield, Mikey Stasalovich, Joe Dignam, Craig Bailey, Garrett Hodgkins, Sebastian Jackson, Ethan Gilbert, and Coach Woody Hanstein. Front row (left to right): Nathan Schultz, Justin Lowe, Mark Garrido, Marco Servello, Madison Moody, Patrick Anderson, Dan Bridgman, Zach Lutick, Tom Ross, Nick Ervin, and Sam Peluso.