June Alumnus of the Month: Josh Rubin

This month we honor Josh Rubin. Josh played pretty much every position there is to play at Michigan. But is likely best known for his games at flanker and hooker. He was able to manage so many positions because of his wide array of rugby skills having started playing in the backs. Rubin was a great reader of the game yet displayed a fierce physical style that included tackles and poaches before any opposition player arrived. He was smart, savvy, tough, competitive, and still cares deeply about the club. When you put it all together, he’s simply a great teammate.

When did you play?
I played three years for Washtenaw RFC from 1999-2002 (when the team transitioned from Pioneer Rugby to Washtenaw), and I was brought into the UMRFC family by Masso and Kevin Barlow. I played with the UMRFC for all four years of college (2002-2006), meaning that I came into a team already full of incredibly talented players and great people (some of whom included Andrew Marcus, Wes Farrow, Mike Livanos, Barlow, Scrumpy Jack, Aaron Turk, Matt Kuriluk, Dan Cronin, Craig Williams, Brad Lusk, and Kurt Sarsfield). Those guys really set a classy tone for my generation and, I’m sure, the generations that came after us. In my year were guys like Coach Trenary, Kevin VanderJagt, Karl Seibert, Mike Eller, Ben Becker, Cian Brogan, and Corey Kanitz, all of whom became my future housemates and best college friends. I’ve played rugby in other places (New Zealand, Egypt, and South Africa a bit) and with other teams, but none of those experiences could compare to the ones I had at Michigan. Wes Farrow once told me that there’s nothing like looking down the line and seeing 14 of your best friends standing next to you, and I can finally appreciate how right he was.

Any special honors?
Apart from the honor of training and playing next to the guys listed above (and so many more), I was a captain with Coach Trenary in 2006, vice president in 2005, rookie of the year in 2002 and player of the year in 2006. My biggest accomplishment, though, has to have been playing for the Midwest Championship side in 2005. That experience taught me that, when you get a chance to do something you really love, at the right age, with brilliant folks, you really need to make sure to savor it. I draw inspiration from that team all the time. Along similar lines, my biggest rugby REGRET has to be participating in the decision to leave two guys out of that same team when we went to nationals in the spring. They helped us get there, they were part of the team, and I speak only for myself when I say that I should have supported them. Guys, I’m sorry.

Favorite memories or teammates?
As far as favorite teammates are concerned, I’ve listed a few of them above, but there are too many more to include. I just hope they realize how much I enjoyed playing with them. As to favorite memories, I have four. The first was the first time I saw Andrew Marcus play. When that guy was healthy, he was absolutely unstoppable. That really stuck with me, especially because I was a little freshman at the time and had no idea what college rugby was like. The second was an inside crash ball I ran with Adam Kelsey against Miami of Ohio in the Midwest Playoffs in 2004. It was the perfect call, at the perfect time, run perfectly, and it worked like a charm. Things rarely go as you plan in rugby so I’ve learned to appreciate the moments when you get it right. Kelsey was a special flyhalf and he had a knack for getting it right. The third moment was when Evan Currie made a try saving tackle (in the national playoffs?) by sprinting from the right wing at midfield to the lefthand corner, covering something like 50 meters in a what felt like three seconds. He came out of absolutely nowhere, and so many other guys would have simply given up and watched the guy score. Nobody would have blamed him if he stopped, but he refused to give up anyway. The final moment, and the one I think of the most, was a tackle that Wes made against Bowling Green in our match at their place during the regular season of 2005. They were running some tricky penalty play and he just blew the whole thing to smithereens. I don’t think I realized how good we were before he made that hit, but once he did, I believed. That’s why Wes (and Andrew Finn) were such great leaders — they saw how good we were before we saw it, and they found ways to convince us.

What are you doing now?
Everyone gets something out of Michigan rugby, but I think I got more than most. I wrote my undergraduate thesis in anthropology about our team, I went and got my PhD in anthropology after spending nearly two years in South Africa studying rugby in that country, and I’m currently teaching classes on sports, art, and anthropology at a small college in Maine. Without rugby, I literally cannot conceive how my life would have turned out.

Anything else?
Thank you again for choosing me. It’s really an honor.