Last year, the Bears failed to make the playoffs, suffered two losses for the first time since 2009 and played all their matches on the road. It was not a normal season for the 26-time national champions.

“A lot of people saw us as having a down year,” said Cal captain Seamus Kelly early in the season. “We want to re-establish ourselves at the top of the sport.”

And that was the goal coming into the spring: to prove last season was just an anomaly.

The team’s campaign started well. At Cal’s official reopening of Witter Rugby Field, against Stanford, the Bears exploded for a 176-0 victory. In the team’s first match in the newly formed PAC Rugby Conference, against Arizona State, Cal won 104-0. And in a rematch of last year’s loss to Cal Poly, the Bears defeated the Mustangs 112-7.

A 10-point home win over the University of British Columbia in February was an early test. But Cal was the best team throughout the match — minus a few lapses in the second half.

The Bears had yet to show how good they could be.

But in the course of two matches in early March, the Bears lost scrumhalf Paul Bosco and wing Anthony Lombardo to season-ending injuries. For a team with more than five dozen players, it wasn’t a question of whether or not someone could fill in the spots but of how the Bears would respond after losing two of the best players in the country at their positions.

Despite the injuries, the Bears kept winning.

With a 17-0 record, Cal headed into its final three matches of the regular season in what proved to be the Bears’ toughest stretch. After slim halftime leads against British Columbia and Utah, Cal used strong second halves to win.

But the team’s most impressive comeback came in the regular season finale against St. Mary’s. Trailing by 15 at the half, the Bears scored three tries in 13 minutes to open the second half. Cal went on to beat the Gaels by 11 points.

It proved to be the defining win of the season.

Less than a month after the St. Mary’s match, in the finals of the Varsity Cup National Championships, the Bears were down early.

Trailing Brigham Young University 16-3 late in the first half, Cal freshman Russell Webb’s try brought the Bears within single digits.

In the second half, when BYU tried to extend its lead, Cal came back again. A try from Kelly with six minutes to play tied the score. For a moment, it looked like the Bears might pull it off.

But a well-executed tactic — a drop kick off the foot of BYU halfback Jonathan Linehan — as time expired, ended Cal’s undefeated season and hopes for a title.

Finishing with a national championship would have been a storybook end to the year. But Cal head coach Jack Clark still viewed the season as a success.

“The 2013 team, under Seamus’ leadership, really took us back to where we want to be,” Clark said after the championship match. “I’m privileged to coach this particular team. I am really proud of the things we were able to accomplish.”

For Kelly, the match against BYU should not be his last. He plans on returning to the team for his fifth year next spring in what Clark said would be his third season as captain of the Bears. Even though the 2013 season ended without a championship trophy, the team’s 21-1 record re-established Cal’s standing as one of the best rugby teams in the country.

“There were some great moments this season,” Kelly said after the match against BYU. “I think we can look at ourselves as a team that got Cal rugby back on track.”

Stephen Hobbs covers rugby. Contact him at shobbs@dailycal.org

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Twenty-one wins were forged on halftime adjustments — tweaks that turned those lingering close games into routs. Three weeks ago, Cal trailed St. Mary’s by 15 at halftime only to turn the tables and waltz to an easy win. Not every game was a tale of two halves, but in those that were, the second halves always belonged to the blue and gold. Why would the national championship be any different?

It hurts to get so close to the top of a mountain only to tumble off just inches from the peak. After stifling a blizzard of BYU attacks in a tie game in the waning minutes, a mere dropkick befell the Bears. Seconds later, the whistle blew. 27-24. Game over. Season over. Twenty-one wins. And one stinkin’, heart-wrenching, soul crusher of a loss.

It sucks to lose. It sucks even more when you’ve made a habit of winning. Consolation is a cruel reward.

But damn, don’t let this overshadow everything else the Cal rugby team did this year.

If a team’s entertainment value is measured by its margin of victory, the Bears were astoundingly boring this year. Cal didn’t win a single match all year by single digits. Coach Clark, the professor of process, trains his team not to look at the scoreboard. It’s a luxury only teams like Cal can afford. Even in Clark’s most lopsided wins, he maintains a critical eye.

On Jan. 26, the Bears beat Stanford, 176-0. So, how did you think your boys did, Coach?

“I thought we did OK.”

UBC was supposed to be a challenge. Cal won the “World Cup” by a total of 42 points. Utah was supposed to be a challenge. Cal won by 22. Navy was supposed to be a challenge. The Bears throttled them, 74-6.

Those results could have been worse. Penn State was the only other fearsome foe Cal faced from across the Mississippi. The Bears won that matchup, 100-0.

There will be another national championship played this year under the aegis of the fading collegiate format that is USA Rugby. In the coming weeks, there might be debate over which of the two championships is the “real” one. There shouldn’t be. Saturday’s matchup was clearly contested between the two best teams in college rugby.

It was the first time all year Cal played a game that was still being contested late in the second half. BYU’s team not only rolled with Cal’s punches — it fought back.

It was unlike anything the Bears had seen this year. Down 19-10 halfway through the second half, Jack O’Beirne converted try cut the lead to two. BYU promptly answered with a try of its own. Seamus Kelly’s try with six minutes left helped the Bears tie the game, but it was Jonny Linehan’s fluttering dropkick that sounded the game’s final note.

Maybe the Bears just needed to play more close games. Or maybe collegiate opponents aren’t enough of a challenge for them anymore. The Cougars’ two losses came to strong club teams. Perhaps the bitter taste of defeat was what galvanized them.

The cards were stacked against the Bears, but you won’t see any Cal players attributing their play to BYU’s raucous home field advantage, nor the slew of injuries that stripped the team of a good chunk of its senior talent. No, the Bears will attribute this loss to sloppy play and a lack of precision. As a result, BYU gets the glory.

Would the Bears have won if they’d been fully healthy? We’ll never know. So it goes with sports. You give it your best with the best you are given and hope that’s enough to beat the other guys. Cal’s best, even without several of the top players in the country, was good enough to beat the other guys 21 times this year.

It just wasn’t enough on Saturday.

Chris Yoder covers rugby. Contact him at cyoder@dailycal.org. Follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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With only seconds left in the match, Brigham Young University’s freshman halfback Jonathan Linehan received the ball from a scrum just meters away from the Bears’ goal line. The Cal players had no time to react. In one motion, Linehan drop-kicked the ball through the uprights.

The referee then blew his whistle. The match was over.

Cal (21-1) fell, 27-24, to BYU (12-2) in Saturday afternoon’s final of the inaugural Varsity Cup National Championships.

“Guys played really hard, but I think our game was lacking a certain level of precision,” said Cal captain Seamus Kelly after the match. “We just let some little things go, and that cost us.”

Kelly emphasized that the Bears’ inability to complete scoring chances was key to the final outcome. Fullback Jake Anderson missed two penalty kicks, and Cal failed to come away with points after having chances near the Cougars’ goal line.

“They just took advantage of our mistakes and their opportunities,” Kelly said. “In a championship game, you can’t leave points off the board.”

Cal head coach Jack Clark agreed. He felt his team’s inability to put points away early played a bigger factor in his team’s loss than the final play of the match.

“I think we had some opportunities to score some points earlier in the match,” Clark said. “We had three or four legitimate scoring opportunities that we didn’t realize. That was a game that we could have won, and we didn’t. We let that one get away.”

But even with the missed chances, the Bears had multiple instances where they fought back during the game. The comeback began at the end of the first half.

Trailing by 13 points with six minutes left in the half, Cal freshman flyhalf Russell Webb’s quick-tap off of a penalty surprised BYU. Webb drove over the try-line, and his score brought the game to the 16-10 halftime score.

The Bears’ effort continued in the second half. “We had some players who put their guts into it, like Seamus,” Clark said. “I thought we played better in the second half that we did in the first.”

With the Cougars leading 19-10, mid-way through the second half, the Bears scored off of an attacking lineout. After Brendan Daly received the ball, a rolling maul from the Bears pushed BYU back to its goal line where flanker Jack O’Beirne touched down.

After an unconverted try by the Cougars, the Bears used another attacking lineout to set up a try from Kelly. A conversion by Anderson tied the score at 24 with only six minutes remaining.

Then came Linehan’s kick in the final seconds to seal the game. The freshman accounted for 22 of BYU’s points.

The Cougars’ win gave the team their third national championship in program history. All three have come in the past five seasons.

It was also the seventh meeting between the two teams in a national championship. With the loss, the Bears now have a 5-2 record in those matches.

After beating BYU in the national championship final in 2010 and 2011, the Bears failed to make the postseason last year.

Cal’s veteran players therefore viewed this year’s campaign as an opportunity for redemption.

And although the Bears’ season did not end perfectly, the team’s success this year was a sign that the program was back to its expectations.

“There were some great moments this season,” Kelly said. “I think we can look at ourselves as the team that got that Cal rugby back on track.”

Stephen Hobbs covers rugby. Contact him at shobbs@dailycal.org

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But Cal’s noon matchup against BYU on Saturday won’t be like all the others.

Forget the 176-0 walloping of Stanford — Cal’s largest win ever — and the three other triple-digit wins over some of college rugby’s most esteemed opponents.

Forget the “World Cup” — the pair of hard-fought wins over British Columbia that should have been close but turned into routs of Cal’s ancient rival.

Forget the ease with which the Bears won the PAC Rugby Conference championship in its inaugural year, winning its five conference games by an average of 60 points.

Forget the undefeated regular season and the spotless 21-0 record. The gap between Cal and every team it faced was a veritable chasm.

It was all just a prelude for Saturday’s main event.

The Varsity Cup National Championship between two gritty juggernauts in Provo, Utah, will be the definitive yardstick in one of Cal’s more impressive seasons in recent memory. The capstone in what has been a historic season for the Bears will be the hardest piece to place.

“They’re a very, very talented team,” says Cal coach Jack Clark of the Cougars. “They’re well-coached, and they’ll be playing at home in front of a large, partisan crowd.”

Since USA Rugby began crowning national champions in 1980, the two squads have stood head-and-shoulders over the college rugby world — particularly in recent years. Only five times in the last three decades has a team other than Cal or BYU won the national title. No other team has won since 2003.

As the 21st century unfurled, Cal-BYU became an annual event. From 2006-11, the two teams squared off for the national championship six years in a row, with the Bears winning all but one of them.

But unlike Cal’s championships of preceding years, for which scorelines tended to favor Cal quite generously, BYU became the rare team that could play the Bears in a nail-biter. Four of those six championship games were decided by 12 points or less. Two were decided by just three.

This year’s matchup could be similarly close.

The Cougars (11-2) have marauded through their 15s schedule with Cal-like cunning, ruthlessly dispatching all their opponents except for two club teams. Since their new stadium, South Field, was renovated in 2008, the Cougars have never lost a home match against collegiate competition.

“(It’s) a really hostile atmosphere with the fans there,” said Cal senior Seamus Kelly. “It’ll be a major challenge.”

But the championship is more than a mere battle between two of the country’s best teams.

Saturday’s matchup will be the first final in the inaugural Varsity Cup, a collegiate competition that arose out of the dust of a crumbling USA Rugby, which saw its talent pool diluted after the flight of its top two members.

The Varsity Cup consists of just eight teams this year, but it includes the two programs that matter the most.

“It’ll really be a steep challenge for our boys,” Clark said. “But for what it matters, we’re looking forward to it.”

Chris Yoder covers rugby. Contact him at cyoder@dailycal.org. Follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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Danny Barrett called them “big, strong, thick guys who are going out to protect our country.”

Even Cal coach Jack Clark called them “the most organized, buttoned-up, disciplined, fit, team-oriented guys you can ever imagine.”

The Cal rugby team seemed to be expecting a challenge from the U.S. Naval Academy in Saturday’s national semifinal.

It wasn’t even close.

The Bears bade farewell to their home crowd and advanced to the Varsity Cup national championship with a resounding 74-6 win over the Midshipmen at Witter Rugby Field.

“When there’s nothing to lose, single elimination, there’s not much to leave in the tank,” said Kelly, a senior. “We emptied it.”

In a pattern consistent with many of their blowout wins this year, the Bears (21-0) allowed their opponent to hang in early in the first half before making adjustments to put the game out of reach.

Three minutes in, Navy (9-2) took a 3-0 lead on a Jack McAuliffe penalty kick. After two Cal tries gave the Bears a hearty lead, McAuliffe nailed another penalty at the 20-minute mark to cut Cal’s lead to 12-6.

The Midshipmen wouldn’t score again the rest of the day. The Bears closed the game on a 62-0 run.

“I think we played good defense,” Barrett, a senior playing his final home game for Cal, said. “It’s a tough thing when you’ve got a guy who’s going to be giving his life running at you, trying to bowl over you. So our defense, our tackling was stout today. It was on par.”

Cal’s lethal, aggressive offense left Navy’s defense on its heels throughout the match. No more than 13 minutes passed between each Cal try, with six being scored in each half.

Kelly led the squad with four tries, but nine different Bears contributed points throughout the match. Freshman Harry Adolphus, making his first start of the season at fullback, nailed all five of his conversions after taking over for an injured Jake Anderson.

Even by Cal standards, it was a landmark performance. Whereas many head coaches are self-critical after being routed by the Bears, Navy’s Mike Flanagan refused to admonish his own team.

“We know we can’t adjust what we do to stop what they do,” he said. “We worked really hard to play our style and our scheme, but Cal did a great job defensively, keeping us out of it.”

Now just one game stands between the Bears and their eighth national championship in the last 10 years. Their opponent? BYU, the winner of the other two.

The two teams had squared off in six consecutive national title games before the Bears withdrew from USA Rugby last year. With the two old rivals realigned this year in the newly inaugurated Varsity Cup, Cal will face its stiffest challenge on the road in the season’s final game.

“No doubt,” Clark said when asked if the upcoming matchup is his team’s toughest of the year.

But after the team’s performance against Navy, it’s hard to doubt the Bears at all.

“These guys are really good,” Flanagan said. “This might be clinically, technically, physically one of the best Cal teams we’ve had the privilege to play against.

“Man oh man, they’re rock solid.”

Chris Yoder covers rugby. Contact him at cyoder@dailycal.org. Follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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Not only will a win against the No. 6 seed Naval Academy advance the No. 2 Bears (20-0) to the finals of the Varsity Cup National Championships, but Cal will also have a chance to close out its first season back at home with an undefeated record.

And for a team that played the 2011 and 2012 seasons completely on the road, it has been a welcome return. So far, the team is 12-0 at home, with its closest outcomes coming in its last two matches.

“It’s been tremendous to be back here,” said Cal captain Seamus Kelly. “This is our home. Every time we run on this field with the fans and the championship banners, we are reminded of what’s come before us and the responsibility and the tradition we are a part of.”

Success for the Cal rugby team at home is nothing new. In fact, no player on the current Cal roster has ever lost a 15s match at home.

The last time the Bears lost to an opponent at Witter Rugby Field was March 3, 2007, to the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club.

And the last time Cal lost at home to a collegiate rugby team? April 3, 2004, to Cal Poly.

Despite Cal’s success, Saturday’s 2 p.m. match against Navy could be different.

The Midshipmen are coming off a 32-0 upset win over Dartmouth in Annapolis, Md., a victory that followed Cal’s win over Notre Dame last weekend.

After Cal head coach Jack Clark watched Navy play, he is expecting a tough match from the opposition.

In their history, the Bears have yet to lose to Navy, and the last time the two teams met in the postseason, Cal defeated the Midshipmen in the national collegiate semifinals in 2007. That year, the Bears went on to win the national championship.

“The Naval Academy team is comprised of a bunch of the most organized, buttoned-up disciplined, fit, team-oriented guys you can ever imagine,” Clark said. “How are we going to do when we play against a group of men who are of that caliber? Traditionally we’ve done well. But we don’t take that for granted.”

Clark was also impressed by Navy’s scrumhalf, No. 9, and flyhalf, No. 10, who he said possessed the ball for the majority of Navy’s offensive possessions.

“I thought they were were the two best 9s and 10s in the competition,” Clark said. “And a couple of the best I have seen all season.”

Combine that with uncertainty over injuries to Cal’s Andrew Battaglia, Russell Webb and Jared Braun, who did not travel to Annapolis last weekend, and the match could be tight.

But either way, the Bears can take solace in the fact of where the match is being played.

“There is nothing better than playing here at home,” said Cal hooker Grant Hyjer. “Coming back here and being able to go out with a bang would be a really awesome day.”

Stephen Hobbs covers rugby. Contact him at shobbs@dailycal.org.

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In many ways, coach Jack Clark is Cal rugby. The impact Clark had as the coach of the Cal rugby team redefined the program and positively impacted the advancement of the sport in the United States. In his 30th year as coach, the Daily Cal examines and deconstructs the man, the myth and the legend that is Jack Clark.

The man, the myth: Deconstructing Cal rugby legend Jack Clark

Jack Clark is a Cal rugby legend. But behind the aura, he is a man in full control of the club he built.

Clark is more than just a coach

Former Cal rugby beat writer Christina Jones reflects on the impact that Jack Clark had on her Berkeley experience and what he means to the Cal community.

Jack Clark: Through the years

The Daily Cal looks through Jack Clark from 1978 to 2010 in photos.

Jack Clark issue: Cal wins fifth national rugby title convincingly

In tribute to Jack Clark’s 30 years at Cal, the Daily Cal re-published a 1985 recap of Clark’s first national championship against Maryland.

The post The Jack Clark Issue appeared first on The Daily Californian.

His Cal rugby team was behind St. Mary’s by 15 points — the first time the club was trailing an opponent at halftime all season. Cal’s undefeated regular season was in jeopardy.

Clark looked into the eyes of his players, who donned their blue and gold striped jerseys and formed a semicircle around him. “Let’s put something into this thing,” Clark calmly says over the buzz of more than 2,000 fans in attendance.

His tone was less like a rugby coach than it was like a teacher encouraging his students to put in more effort. The halftime talk ended quickly afterward.

“When he talks, all eyes are on him,”says Bob Driscoll, who serves as the athletic director at Providence College and who worked in the Cal athletic department from 1987-2001. “There is an unconditional belief in him. When he says something, it is absolutely authentic and believable.”

His players retook the field and knew exactly what to do.

At 6-feet-5-inches with broad shoulders, Clark is still built like the offensive lineman he was at Cal. He is an imposing figure. Even in a group of rugby players, the 57-year-old stands out.

But his resume is more outstanding than his stature.

In 30 seasons as head coach of the Cal rugby team, he has won 22 national championships and compiled a 558-70-5 overall record as coach of the Bears’ 15s team with records unmatched in collegiate rugby history.

“I don’t think there is a better American coach,” said Mike Flanagan, head coach of the Navy rugby team. “We see where American rugby can be. He has built the team — and shown us how to do it.”

Straddling the line between being supportive and being direct, Clark has also been able to connect with his players on another level. The coach, who is famous for his inspirational post-championship talks, also knows exactly what to say, just at the right moment.

With his team trailing the Gaels at halftime, Clark was at his calmest. The players didn’t need their coach to get their face; they knew exactly what to do.

“He knows how to put things into perspective,” says Gary Hein, who played rugby at Cal from 1984-88. “With regard to any given game, moment in time and season.”

In the first 15 minutes of the second half, the Bears exploded for three tries. And for a second, after the Bears scored a late try to give them a 16-point lead late in the second half, Clark even took part in a momentary celebration. Clark pumped his first forward, like a boxer jabbing with a right hook.

The celebration came from a different Jack Clark, who normally paces back and forth on the sidelines emotionless, even if his team is up by triple-digits.

It was a rare moment of emotion from the usually stoic coach. It was a glimpse into one of many Jack Clarks.

Before he became the face of American rugby, Clark was a letterman in football, basketball and track and field in high school. Rugby was not even on his radar.

After three semesters at Orange Coast Community College, close to his hometown of Huntington Beach, Calif., he took a scholarship to play football at Cal, where he started in the spring of 1976. At Orange Coast, he was first exposed to rugby, so  he knew a “little bit” about the sport.

“I thought it was always great, from the very first time I saw it,” Clark says. “There is a little bit of basketball and a little bit of football involved. So it always looked very attractive to me and fun to play.”

But it wasn’t until Clark came to Cal that he first played the sport. After his football season in the fall, he and a dozen of his teammates joined the rugby team in the spring.

“It was just kind of a natural migration,” Clark says. “I think somebody just tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Let’s go — you’re going to play rugby.’”

It turned out to be the perfect sport for the big and athletic Clark. But it wasn’t until he was cut trying out for the Philadelphia Eagles in the National Football League in 1978 that he became devoted solely to rugby.

He was selected to join the U.S. National Team, and in October 1980, he was the only American starter for the World XV team at Cardiff Arms Park in Wales.

Already playing for the National Team, Clark had aspirations to continue his rugby career overseas and to play at the highest level that he could.

“I would have been in New Zealand somewhere making tackles undoubtedly and ended up with a bunch of good stories,” Clark says.

But one month later, on Nov. 10, 1980, the course of Clark’s life — and playing career — changed.

At an after-party of a restaurant opening in San Francisco, a woman came into the party, saying she had been accosted. When the assailants tried to follow her in, they were forced to leave by the other people in attendance.

Observing what was happening, Clark was not eager to get involved. He felt that other people in attendance — San Francisco 49er players and other rugby players — could take care of the situation.

But as he tried to go outside to help clear the men out of the street, he was hit in the back of the head by one of the assailants.

Clark chased the man across the street when suddenly, he faced a man with a gun, a 9 mm Magnum. He had “no way to go and no way out.”

He was hit four times.: twice in his left leg, once in his right knee and once in his hand.

Clark was rushed to the hospital and underwent multiple surgeries. After two months in the hospital, losing 40 pounds and suffering “debilitating” pain, he faced possible amputation.

“It was important for me to fight through that,” Clark said. “You can always give up your leg, but there is only a period of time you can fight for it. And I wasn’t done fighting.”

Even though he recovered well enough to start training, and he felt like he could play rugby again, Clark decided against it.

If it hadn’t been for that shooting, Clark thinks now, he may never have got into coaching rugby and would have lived a completely different life.

“Who knows, I may have never coached,” Clark says. “It is funny how things that seem like tragedies at the time are ultimately blessings.”

With his rugby career over, Clark turned to an investment banking job, where he became a senior vice president of a firm. But he found the job unfulfilling and decided he wanted to return to sports as a coach.

As a young athlete at Cal, Clark appreciated his coaches, who he said “made the contest really come alive.” He even thought about coaching other sports, but by then, Clark had fallen in love with rugby.

Clark returned to his alma mater, in 1982, and served as a volunteer assistant coach under Ned Anderson, his former rugby coach at Cal. After serving for two years as Anderson’s assistant, the two men switched roles.

Anderson served as Clark’s assistant for a year and then handed him the reins. In 1984, Clark became the sixth coach in the Cal rugby program’s history.

In 1985, Clark’s second season as head coach, the Bears won the national title.

“He built on the strong foundation that was already here,” Anderson says. “He has taken it to another level.”

Less than 24 hours after the St. Mary’s game, 60-odd Cal rugby players sat in gray Cal rugby T-shirts, and blue shorts with notebooks in front of them. At the Tahir Family Team Theater, in the depths of the university’s newly completed athletic center, the team was holding a postmatch review session.

In the film room, Clark is the professor. He paces in front of the team, moves his arms back and forth and opens the meeting by summarizing his initial thoughts from the match.

The satisfaction from the team’s comeback win was still evident. Players and coaches had momentary laughs about the game when recalling it from memory. But for the most part, Clark and coach Tom Billups were back at work.

Despite his full control of the team, Clark still knows when to let go and delegate work to his players. When one of the players brought up the team’s “big-time” scrumming ability as an area of concern, Clark said to his older players, in the front row, “Can I leave that one with you guys? We all got to opt in.”

When the meeting shifted to film, so did the tension in the room. Billups controlled the computer, and Clark controlled the silence. Both coaches used laser pointers to identify specific structures of players or efforts that they did not like.

Clark emphasized that he was not satisfied by the team’s performance.

“How come you didn’t bring that up when you were jumping up and down throwing your hands up and down like a madman?” Clark asked when one of his players celebrated prematurely in the St. Mary’s match. “Guys in blue and gold jerseys don’t do that.”

The players responded in unison: “Yes, coach.”

After showing the first 15 minutes of the match, Clark emphasized that the Bears controlled large moments of possession in the St. Mary’s defensive half, and that the team had given the Gaels chances to score by turning the ball over.

It did not look like a team being dominated. Just one not executing.

Billups and Clark continued to run the film. The two teams traded penalty kicks and the Gaels held on to an early lead.

But by then, Clark had already made his points: Play needs to improve, Stay focused and the first half was not as bad as it seemed.

“OK, that’s good here,” Clark said, directing coach Billups to stop the film.

The last shot on the projector was the scoreboard. It showed his team down three points with 10 minutes to play in the first half.

Bypassing the team’s dramatic comeback in the second half, Clark went back to the front of the room, ready to lead his team back to work.

Stephen Hobbs covers rugby. Contact him at shobbs@dailycal.org

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Before Jack Clark became the coach and legend that redefined the Cal rugby program, he was an athlete once focused on cracking into the professional football ranks.

Transferring from Orange Coast Community College to Cal as a football player, Clark played two years on the football team. In 1978, he tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL before devoting himself completely to rugby, a late love in his life. In the next coming years, Clark showed he had potential to become a star rugby player on a global scale.

But on a fateful November day in 1980 at San Francisco, Clark was shot and hospitalized for months. His aspirations as a professional athlete effectively came to a screeching halt.

1985:

Since its inception in 1882, the Cal rugby team had only six head coaches through its entire 131-year old history. Before 1985, the Bears won only four national championships. With a 28-year old Jack Clark coming into replace Ned Anderson in 1984, the program reached unmatched success for the next 30 years. Under Clark, the program won 22 national titles.

For every stretch of success, there is a beginning, and for Clark and Cal, it began on May 5, 1985. The Bears defeated Maryland, 31-6, in Pebble Beach, Calif. to win its first title under Clark. The second-year coach, on the top right of the photo, maintained its stern look even as the team celebrated. Perhaps Clark knew celebration was premature: there were still a lot of work to done.

1989:

In this photo, Clark, center, poses with former Cal rugby players and Oxford Varsity Blues Don James, right, and Gary Hein, left in London.

Under Clark’s leadership as the Cal rugby head coach, many of his star pupils continued their rugby success abroad. The long list included James, who starred in the 1985 Cal rugby team that won the national title against Maryland at Pebble Beach, Calif.

1997:

The entire 1990s were Bear Territory.

From 1991 to 2002, the Cal rugby team enjoyed an unmatched run of success, winning 12 consecutive national titles. The success elevated Cal as the preeminent collegiate rugby program in the nation and Clark as the most successful rugby coach in America.

In this photo, Clark, left, is posed with a former Cal player and Oxford Varsity Blue Ray Lehner, right, in London. Much like Hein and James, Lehner followed their rugby alumni’s footsteps to success.

In 1997, the Bears routed Penn State in the national title game, 41-15, in Witter Rugby Field at Berkeley.

2008:

With a new rivalry forging in the 2000s with BYU, Clark and the Cal rugby team faced perennial challenges from the Cougars in the national title game. Starting in the narrow 29-26 victory over BYU in the 2006 national title game, the Bears faced the title game in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011 against the Cougars.

In 2008, the Bears faced little challenge against BYU to win its fifth consecutive national title. At Stanford, Calif., the Bears cruised to a 59-7 victory over the Cougars. It was Clark’s 20th national title as well, giving all the more reason for Clark, right, to break out of its hard exterior to celebrate another national title.

2010:

On Sep. 29, 2010, after rumors of downsizing the Cal rugby program was on the chopping block, Clark received the bad news: the University of California announced that the Cal rugby team would be one of the five sports cut from the university’s athletic programs.

Unlike the other four sports, the rugby team will be classified as a “varsity club”, relegated from its varsity program status.

With the Witter Rugby Field in construction at the time of the demotion, it was yet another gut check to the program.

But Clark bounced back quickly, getting enough financial and alumni support to get the program off the chopping block.

By the way, the Bears won another national title against BYU, 19-7.

Seung Y. Lee is the sports editor. Contact him at sylee@dailycal.org.

The post Jack Clark: Through the years appeared first on The Daily Californian.

That would be Cal rugby coach Jack Clark. And I didn’t just learn the difference between a ruck and a scrum.

I remember being apprehensive about taking the rugby beat in 2011. Jack Clark was the stuff of legends — a gruff, straight-shooting mountain of a man who ran a tight ship that did nothing but win and win big.

He would be extra guarded with me, I was warned, because of the tension with the athletic department that fall. The university had decided to strip Cal rugby of its varsity status the next year, and Clark was fighting it tooth-and-nail. What I gathered from all of this: Tread lightly.

He is by far the strongest personality I’ve encountered, and he has ruffled his fair share of feathers. But he stands for something, and I respect that. The commanding presence certainly did not become a teddy bear toward me, but he opened the door, treated me with respect and gave me great access to the team.

I was always a little nervous trekking up to the fieldhouse, but preview interviews became the highlight of my week. I knew I was going to learn something about rugby and, inevitably, something about life. I prepared more for those interviews than any others I’ve done.

I had to keep up — conversing with a person as intelligent and careful with his words as Clark was a thrilling challenge.

I found much to admire about the way he ran his program. It seemed he was using rugby as a training ground for life, a very refreshing perspective on the role of sports.

Clark demanded the best from his players, which could be difficult while regularly obliterating opponents. The “we have a lot to work on” quotes got old, but they really believed it.

Clark preached that you owe it to yourself and your brother to never be satisfied with good enough and to push to be better. Those are sports cliches uttered by most teams, but Cal rugby backed it up.

And excuses aren’t in Clark’s lexicon. While slaying foes on the pitch, his team was fighting to save its program. The Bears had to relocate “home” games to Treasure Island. They lost their practice field leading up to the postseason to accommodate teams displaced from the Memorial Stadium renovation.

These things could have become distractions, but Clark wouldn’t let that happen. I heard the same message echoed time and time again: “You can be a victim of your situation or put your shoulders back and get on with it.”

I still harken back to that approach and the ultimate outcome that year — an undefeated campaign, a national title and reinstatement to varsity status — as a shining example of overcoming adversity. When I’m overwhelmed, I recall Clark’s definition of mental toughness: the ability to focus on the next most important thing. When I catch myself being complacent, I remember his relentless drive for improvement. And I tagged along for a single season — imagine the guys who spend four years with the man.

Clark is doing much more than carrying on a remarkable winning tradition. He’s making men out of boys — the kind of men who treat people with respect, give everything their best effort and make their families and their communities stronger.

The kind of men who become American heroes, like Mark Bingham, who stormed the cockpit of a hijacked plane on Sept. 11.

What Clark has built will last far longer than the luster of trophies, and that’s worth its weight in gold. Cheers, Coach. Cal Rugby Forever.

Contact Christina Jones at cjones@dailycal.org

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