March Alumnus of the Month: Dan Kuriluk

Congratulations to our March Alumnus of the Month, Dan Kuriluk!

When did you play? 

Dan “Ducky” Kuriluk: 2003-2007

What got you started?

A certain infamous Greek, Mike Livanos, started a high school program in Northville/Novi and after he got my brother to play, I followed in their footsteps during my senior year of high school.

What position did you play?

Wing and fullback with some center during my undergrad years. I was constantly battling with Chris Schwaaaaa to make that final 15.  Later on, I started a coordinated program to increase mass and shorten my temper, which precipitated a move to scrumhalf and flanker.  By that point I was only good at three things: raking new players who didn’t know the rules too well, rugby league style smash-ups, and–as a flanker–early releasing to late-hit the flyhalf. 

After graduation and before flight school, I played for the US All-Navy team as an outside center and fullback with Nick “Warpig” Warack. I suffered a severe knee injury before my second year for that team and pretty much ended competitive play for several years. That was a big disappointment as Aaron Turk and Beau Brodtmann played the following year. If Nick and I hadn’t gotten hurt, we would have had some pretty serious alumni representation at a fairly high level of rugby. 

Later on, the Navy sent me to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to learn policy, where I teamed with Aaron Turk again to win the 2014 World MBA Rugby Championship on the HBS Rugby team. I assumed the captaincy from him for the following year playing as a scrumhalf and flanker. My signature move was to sit about ten yards back from a ruck and wait for someone to try to poach the ball. Then I would sprint in and hit them like a tackling dummy, doing my best to rake a body part on the exit. 

What honors/awards did you receive?

I received rookie of the year, presented by Andrew Finn, at the Dexter Knights of Columbus hall. It was somewhat of a bittersweet moment, however, as I believe the intended recipient of the award, Buffalo Bill, was in prison. Buffalo Bill resembled the real Buffalo Bill in both appearance and behavior, and I seem to remember Finn lamenting the fact that they wanted to give it to him, but I’m not sure if we ever saw him again after that year. 

I also served as co-captain in 2006 with Karl Seibert and Nick “Superman” Harris.

What are your favorite memories/teammates?

Way too many to list here so I’ll go through some of the things that really stand out. Some wistful, some terrifying, yet all things I’ll never forget. 

One of my first memories was encountering Karl in a hallway with a 2 foot tall Elmers’ glue mohawk before class one day in my first month at school. I knew right then it was going to be an incredible four years.  His dad was a constant fixture on the sidelines, and hearing him scream himself hoarse at every game was always a big help to our motivation. 

I think my proudest moment came when I had the honor of serving as the creative director on the infamous pumpkin film during Midwest championships of 2006. Watching Crozier’s (coach) face when the game film ended and the feature film began will live with me forever…

All of the parties at the Packard Street houses.  The introduction to weirdness from guys like Scrumpy, Craig, Cronin, Bender, Chairman Drift, Crusher, etc., is probably one of the most formative experiences of my adult life.

Big Joe Mikulec and his arm wrestling championship forever enshrined on VHS.

All of the road trip hijinks: Limping a van to Northern Michigan the final 100 miles with a wheel on the verge of falling off. Tex and Beau going garbage can bowling and parking on the lawn of 144 Hill. Tex taking out a quarter mile of construction barrels on I-75 coming back from Bowling Green, etc., etc. 

The sour cream fight at 144 Hill Street after the Old Boys Banquet when Wes was working at Big10 Burrito.  He went to the shop and brought back several 5-pound tubs of sour cream. The inside of the house looked like someone had sprayed the whole living room with fake Christmas snow, and I can’t imagine how rancid that must have gotten over the next few days. Pretty much anything at that house was insane. I wonder if the bullet holes are still in the kitchen floor from Tex and Tyler’s Saint Patrick’s Day rampage…

Working as a bouncer with several other teammates at Rick’s bar. I would let in a certain unnamed teammate who would bring a pack of bottle rockets, light them, and send them ricocheting across the floor of the overcrowded basement bar. If that wasn’t a fire hazard, then I’m not really sure what is. 

Seeing my grandma (who is now almost 97 and still kicking) travel to all of our game sites except for Northern Michigan. She may be senile, but she still remembers overhearing Wes being pissy about the idea of Matt and me leaving the pool after the National Semi-final in Santa Cruz to spend time with our extended family. I believe she reminded Wes of this back in 2018 after he officiated my wedding.

Those lads from Rochester.

[Editor’s note: Dan’s stories about Nash Bash, witnessing a single-car accident, and saving the lives of multiple people will need to be told in person.]

The one story that really stands out was the beginning of the trip to Thailand in 2005 to do some relief work and play rugby after the tsunami from a few months prior. My brother and I had flown in separately from the team, and we were supposed to arrive in Bangkok about an hour before everyone else. We wait at their gate, the flight arrives, and there’s no team. We ask people getting off the flight, and nobody seems to have seen a group of rugby players. It’s late so we thought maybe we had the wrong flight and we caught a cab to the hotel.  By the time we get to the hotel it’s after midnight, and the clerk has no record of anyone associated with the team. By this point we’re getting pretty nervous, but figure we can just take care of it in the morning. We tell him we’ll just take a room for the night, and he essentially says, “inn’s full boys,” but in Thai.  He was kind enough to call us a cab to take us to another hotel.

We arrive at a little flea bag place in a bit of a rougher neighborhood, and the clerk there gives me directions to the closest internet cafe. I had to walk through several alleys at about 2am, winding my way past leering lady boys, and open air butcher shops. I find the cafe, give the guy some cash for a login code and sit down to see a keyboard that has a full set of Thai characters and no English.  It takes about a half hour, but I’m able to chicken peck my way to my university login and send out several frantic emails for help.  Meanwhile, Matt is sitting in the tiny two-chair lobby and the phone rings. The clerk answers the phone, says something in Thai, and hands it to Matt. The conversation went something like this:

Matt: “Hello?”
Vance: “Kuriluk?”
Matt: “Yeah? Vance?”
Vance: “Yeah! Where the hell are you guys?”

Jeremy Vance had traveled ahead of the team and met our guide for the week, Sopa Kung, a conspiracy-spewing Thai grad student who was convinced by Rondo to lead our trip in return for a free ticket back home for the week. Vance knew that we were flying in separately, and when we didn’t arrive he thought to check an old itinerary.  Apparently the hotel had changed during the planning, and he was able to call the original hotel (which was the one we first showed up to). The clerk remembered Matt and me, and forwarded the call on to the place he had sent us to for the night. When we finally got to the proper hotel, all we knew was that Sopa had called the airline to find out the team flight had been canceled and was told they were no longer coming. Matt came and got me from the cafe, and we figured we’d have to start making some alternate plans for the next few days. The next morning, in the interim, Sopa said she’d take us out to the local mall to kill some time. So we head out, and while we’re walking around, a large British expat sees my Michigan Rugby t-shirt and stops us.  He asked us if we had a game that day against British Club Bangkok, and we explained that we did, but the team’s flight was canceled so we weren’t going to make it. He invited us to come by the club and check out the other games going on that day so we went back to the hotel and grabbed our kits. 

We showed up to the pitch, and they ended up putting Matt, Vance, and me to run with the All-Tokyo Bangkok team against the proper British Club Bangkok team. We all stood about a head taller than anyone on the All-Tokyo team, and none of them spoke a word of English. I’ll tell you what: I served a year in Japan flying alongside my Japanese navy pilot peers, and those guys have the most guts of anyone I’ve ever played rugby with. It was a team of 5’7”, 145-pound Craig Wiliams’ kamikaze-flying into the ruddy-faced, bloated Brits who probably had 50-100 pounds on all of us except for Vance. It was a hard fought match, and I’m pretty sure we lost by something close to triple digits. However, I think I learned more about grit and determination that day than I had at any point in my life. We hung out at the social for a bit and made our way back to the hotel to try to figure out what we were going to do.  As we were milling about, a giant tour bus pulled up and the team filed out. They were a day late due to some flight cancellations and delays, but they made it and the rest of the trip spawned story after story–many of which are still re-told when we all get together. 

The bottom line is that I was in an extremely fortunate position to have the guidance of my brother and the older guys like Finn, Wes, Sultan, Rosy, Turk, Warack, Skyjack; absolute weirdos a year ahead of me like Train, Karl, Rondo, Pauly; nutcases in my year like Russell, Doc, Geis, and Harris and then certifiable lunatics a year below like Tex, Beau, Tyler, Ray, Max, and Barry. 

And then there were some other memories post-graduation. 

Hill street hooligan tours: The Mad River Bar kicking us out after one too many complaints of something silicone swinging around. On the trip to Chicago, Tex, Levo, Wes and I borrowed his sweet mother’s Dodge GRAND Caravan and took out the middle seats. The windows weren’t tinted, but that drive down 94 into downtown Chicago Friday rush hour traffic became quite precarious. 

Vegas 7s: Levo still owes me a cameo on one of his shows for coming in clutch during a certain situation. If you were there, you all know what I’m talking about.  

The 50th and 60th Old Boys reunions. I love how inclusive the Butt Boys are with the crowd during their performances.  I’ve yet to see another band that can remain so calm as Matt and I launch a barrage of fireworks directly towards them.

What have you done after Michigan Rugby?

I was also a member of the Navy ROTC unit during school, and after I received my commission, proceeded on to flight school and became a Navy pilot, earning a combat air medal over Iraq in 2011. I later became a Naval Strategist in the Pentagon and a military aide in the White House under two administrations. I was forced off of active duty due to *allegations* of gross misconduct, but I still serve as a reservist advising on cloud migration projects for Navy Research Labs. For the record, I was *invited*into the Capitol. As a civilian, I currently work in cloud engineering at AWS, but will soon be moving full-time to the company my brother and I started—Alpine Conglomerate.  You may have heard of us, we are the pre-eminent outfit flying rubber gizmos out of Hong Kong.

Currently I live just outside Washington DC in Arlington, VA with my wife and kid, but we’re building a lake house in South Lyon to move the family back to Michigan after this summer. We’ll definitely be looking forward to attending more games and events, and sending more faxes to Karen.  We’ve been trying to get in touch with Dylan about an internship at Alpine, but he’s a hard guy to get in touch with–he must be in high demand. 

How has Michigan Rugby affected you outside of the athletic world?

It’s drastically reduced the circle of people that I’m capable of being friends with. You see, few people I’ve encountered outside of our group possess the required level of weirdness to white-knuckle their way through life. It’s a quality I deeply appreciate with this group, and it’s hard to relate to people who don’t get it.

In that vein, the old boys network is pretty much the base from which I derive any meaningful joy out of life. I’m grateful that the circle has expanded from immediate peers mentioned above to the older alumni like Zeb, Hagan, etc to younger alumni like Scotty Salamango, Levo, and Wu, to recent grads like Guys like Chuck, Big Nick the Vacuum King, Fakey Jake, and Clark Kent–they are all brilliant to be around. 

From learning how to do lines of snuff in public, crashing vans, and kidnapping brides, to listening to Warren Zevon, Michigan Rugby has influenced every fiber of my character–for better or for worse.

Congratulations again to Dan Kuriluk. All of us in the Ann Arbor community look forward to having you back in Michigan!