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“ Ours is a proud history. Long may Shawna pick it continue.” was the only high school among more than 100 collegiate and club teams competing on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and our matches were popular, attracting hundreds of spectators. By 1978, I was on the Xavier faculty, allowing me to be at 16th Street year-round. Most importantly, I had found assistant coaches so dedicated that they failed to notice that, not only were they not being paid, they had to pay their own way on tour: men like Greg Daly ’69, Larry Fox, and Iron Horse I chaperone Dr. Franklin Caesar ’72. In 1979, a talented 19-year-old Englishman named Ian Hawkins became Xavier’s first full-time assistant coach. He left after the season to accept a rugby scholarship to Long Beach State, but was replaced before the 1980 season by two full-time assistants: his older, more experienced countryman, Nigel Milton, and Larry Feher, who had begun his rugby career as Billy Rung’s teammate at St. Francis Prep and was now a member of Xavier’s football staff. Xavier rugby’s budget still being $0, Ian, Nigel, and Larry were as generously paid as their predecessors. With three full-time coaches for the first time ever, not to mention our most experienced player cadre yet, it is small wonder that the 1980 Outlaws compiled the best of Xavier’s first five seasons: a 12-7 record; the Metropolitan New York RFU High School Championship, with wins over St. Francis Prep, Fordham Prep, and Stepinac (yes, Stepinac) and an appearance in the semifinals of the East Coast Championships. In my last-ever game as head coach, Milton and I 32 XAVIER MAGAZINE
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played alongside our kids in a thrilling upset victory over the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on the Mariners’ home pitch. Nigel Milton succeeded me as head coach and, over the next five seasons, transformed the Outlaws into a regional and national powerhouse. In 1984, Xavier won its first East Coast title and made it to the semifinals in the first-ever High School Rugby National Championships. The 1985 season was an epic campaign that saw the Outlaws compile a 13-1-1 record (losing only to a visiting British side), tour to Hawaii, Los Angeles, and Utah, repeat as East Coast champions, and go on to win the first of Xavier’s four national titles. The hero of that thrilling championship final, played on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall, was the Outlaws’ skinny flyhalf and captain, Mike Tolkin ’85. Besides Tolkin, who would go on to coach the USA Eagles, that first national championship team included this future American rugby Who’s Who: Xavier Director of Rugby Joe Sweeney ’85; Iona College head coach and RuggaMatrix podcast host Bruce McLane ’85; former Xavier coach Tim Walsh ’85; USA Rugby director Pete Seccia ’85; Rockaway Youth Rugby co-founder Andrew Israel ’85; Gonzaga High School assistant coach Jimmy Cuddihy ’85; and Fordham Prep assistant coach Paul Burke ’87. The 1985 Outlaws were the first Xavier rugby team to wear maroon and blue instead of whatever colors caught their fancy. And they were the last to call themselves the Outlaws. His mission completed, Nigel Milton returned home to England to begin his career with IBM. It was the end of an era.