College Rugby Has Beckoned Three of Bunce’s Protégés

Kevin Bunce, who has been bringing along young rugby players in the past few years, having taken over the under-19 reins from Rich Brierley, can point with some pride now to the fact that three of his protégés — Brandon Johnson, Axel Alanis, and Josh King — have won scholarships to play the increasingly popular sport in college.

Johnson already has a season under his belt at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md., where it is said he played well enough to be ranked in the country’s top 50. Alanis and King are to matriculate at American International College, in Springfield, Mass., this fall.

Alanis said during a recent conversation at The Star that he had been made aware of the sport in his junior year at East Hampton High School, the year East Hampton didn’t have the numbers to field a football team. “Coach Bunce first saw us in the spring, when Josh and I were with the track team. Then we reconnected in the fall when we were playing football and he was working the chains.”

King heard from Alanis that a fledgling under-19 side was practicing at East Hampton’s Herrick Park. “I showed up one day, in the early spring, and got injured,” said King, with a slight smile. “I got a concussion.”

“I don’t remember,” he said when asked how it had happened. 

“I do,” said Alanis. “He was going to tackle someone in warm-ups, and he ducked his head, which he shouldn’t have done. We did that in football, but it wasn’t the normal way to do it in rugby. . . . We were all beginners, all new to the game. . . .”

In answer to another question, King said that because of the concussion his parents “thought I was crazy to play rugby,” forbade him to play, and urged him to stick with football. 

Of the two, rugby, primarily because spearing is eschewed when tackling (indeed rugby’s safer tackling techniques are being taught to football players now), and because it is a more fluid game, the ball being live most of the time, has been shown to be the less injurious sport — facts that were to prove persuasive when Coach Bunce talked with King’s parents. 

“There’s a constant flow in rugby — in football it’s like 30 seconds,” said Alanis, who is a 210-pound hooker, the player responsible for playing the ball back with his feet to his teammates in rugby’s scrums. “It’s a combination of football and wrestling, even basketball when it comes to the routes you run.”

Both King and Alanis wrestled in high school — King, who weighs 260, wrestled up at 285, and Alanis competed at 195. In rugby, King is a prop forward, one of two props who hold the hooker up between them as he contends for the ball once it’s been introduced into the scrum.

When told East Hampton’s wrestling team had fallen on hard times of late, Alanis said he was sure it would come back. “Things go in cycles,” he said.

Both — as has Johnson, who is one of Mount Saint Mary’s center backs — have played, at Coach Bunce’s instance, in regional tournaments and in developmental camps where they have been seen by college coaches.

“Axel and Brandon and me went to the Olympic training camp in Saratoga Springs over a year ago — Kevin took us up there,” King said, adding that there had been “good feedback.”

“The coach at Mount Saint Mary’s wanted Brandon,” said Alanis. “He saw our under-19 team, the Big House Colts, play St. Francis, I think it was, in the city. . . . Brandon’s a very powerful runner. He’s a prop in 7s,” the faster, pared-down version of 15-on-a-side rugby that is now an Olympic sport.

Rob Guiry, American International’s rugby coach, said in an email, “We’re very excited to bring Axel and Josh up to AIC in the fall. Axel is a great communicator and a strong leader on the field. He’ll fit in great with this team. Josh is raw, with great size and strength — a three-sport athlete in high school. I’m looking forward to getting my coaching claws into him and developing him as a rugby player.”

As for AIC’s rugby history, Guiry said, “We’ve had back-to-back undefeated seasons in 15s, and back-to-back East Coast Rugby Conference championships, beating teams like Boston College, Fairfield, UConn, and UMass — quite an accomplishment for a school with just over 1,300 undergrads. In 7s, we’ve gone to national championship tournaments the last three years, finishing second in 2016, and making it to our first college rugby championship this year, a game that was televised on NBC.”

When asked about 7s, Alanis said he liked it, “but there’s a lot more running — you’re covering the same amount of space with just seven guys. Nobody can let up. If somebody breaks through a hole, it’s off to the races.”

King said Guiry had seen him play in a 7s tournament on Randalls Island this past fall. 

Asked if he would have gone to college otherwise, King smiled and said he probably would have, but not, presumably, with the same enthusiasm. Alanis, who went to Suffolk Community College last fall, agreed. “I would have gone to college,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have played rugby.”

“At AIC they’ve got players from all over the world, from Italy, Portugal, England, Ireland . . . they’ve got a damn good rugby team,” said Alanis. “It’s top-level rugby, the highest you can get.”

“Knock on wood,” King said, in reply to a question, “I haven’t been injured lately.” He added that his brother, Nick Wyche, a freshman at the high school, a former football player whom he had persuaded to come out for rugby, “broke his kneecap and tore ligaments around his knee playing football. He decided to stick with rugby.”

“The worst I’ve had,” said Alanis, “is a bloody nose.”

In parting, they said that they hoped Coach Bunce would come to see them play.