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<\/p>\nFor Tom Clock, MBA\u201998, it all clicked as he watched his colleagues drink beer out of a football boot and sing rugby songs with soldiers. Clock and his mates from Owen\u2019s fledgling rugby team\u2014a winless squad of variable composition\u2014had carpooled to Fort Campbell, Ky., to take on a team from the 101st Airborne. It was a match that a surrealist might have envisioned: an outfit of future MBAs that even some of its own members described as \u201cragtag\u201d versus the legendary outfit that refused to surrender Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. In other words, it should have been no match at all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Although the Army team won, the B-schoolers from Vanderbilt played competitively. Afterwards they joined the victors in a universal rugby ritual of post-game beer. The 101st also introduced the Owen team to another ritual: singing songs with lyrics that all of the participants interviewed for this story declined to quote.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was with those [Airborne] guys that I think we crystallized our identity,\u201d says Clock, Founder and President of the consulting firm Clockwork Inc. \u201cHanging out with them, we became a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only a few months before, he would not have imagined that he\u2019d see his classmates banging heads and bodies on a rugby pitch, much less tackling the U.S. Army. But on that day in 1998, he recalls, \u201cAll of a sudden it became more than Accounting 101 for me. I realized that these are the guys I\u2019m going to block and tackle for. I had been calling to set up matches all over the state just to get us experience, but it wasn\u2019t until Fort Campbell that it felt bigger than the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clock wasn\u2019t alone. Over the course of that year and beyond, other participants came to regard the rugby squad as something both transcendent of and yet quintessentially Owen. And as they became surprisingly successful, in the minds of many players the team also became something else: a symbol for the little school that could not only take on the big boys of the B-school world but take them down hard.<\/p>\n
Like Clock, John Underwood, MBA\u201998, had played competitive rugby before arriving at Owen. To stay in shape and connected with the game, he and Clock began practicing with Vanderbilt\u2019s undergraduate club team, which competed against other SEC schools and teams throughout the region. Underwood, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, says soon after that, \u201cTom [Clock] came up with the idea of a business-school team to compete in this really cool tournament in North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event was the MBA World Cup Rugby Championship, whose entire field involves graduate schools of business. The championship, held annually at Duke University, draws teams not only from across the United States but also from Europe, Canada and Australia. For Clock, the opportunity to compete in that event, against schools that at the time were better known and much larger than Owen, was irresistible.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of my first year,\u201d Clock recalls, \u201cI invited all the guys from the business school to come out and run around. We probably had about 20 who came. That made me think we could put together a team, and the guys were favorable to the idea of competing at Duke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone who liked to run and hit was invited to join, including students from other Vanderbilt schools. No rugby experience was necessary. Size was a bonus. \u201cThey kind of shamed me into joining,\u201d remembers Brent Turner, MBA\u201999, Executive Vice President of Call Products for Marchex, a performance marketing firm in Seattle. \u201cIf you had any kind of athletic ability and didn\u2019t play, you were a wimp.\u201d After his first practice Turner was hooked. \u201cI enjoyed the roughhousing nature of it,\u201d he says. \u201cI liked the fact that rugby involves both brute force and finesse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately there was no shortage of players who could deliver brute force. Walton Smith, MBA\u201999, as recalled by several of his former teammates, was a small mountain who had played on the offensive line for Brown University\u2019s football team. Sam Brown, MS\u201998, who played inside center, had also played college football. \u201cHe was 5-foot-10 and weighed around 230 and ran with passion,\u201d Turner says. \u201cIt was observably unpleasant for opponents to tackle him. In one game at the Duke tournament, I could hear guys on the other team saying, \u2018Oh no,\u2019 when he got the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
But whatever benefits the Old Boys may have gained from the size of some of their players were offset by the size of their squad. With a pool of barely 20 players, few substitutes were available to field the necessary 15 for a \u201cside,\u201d especially when players were injured or fatigued. And fatigue wasn\u2019t hard to come by. \u201cYou do the equivalent of a squat and then run for 15 meters, and then you do it again and again for 40 minutes,\u201d Turner says.<\/p>\n Under Clock\u2019s direction, the fledgling team practiced on Tuesday and Thursday evenings on fields across the street from Vanderbilt\u2019s Student Recreation Center, and then played games on Saturdays. It was a significant commitment of 5\u201310 hours a week on top of the players\u2019 academic work. Tom Barr, MBA\u201998, Vice President of Global Coffee at Starbucks Coffee Co., had never played rugby before trying out for the team. For him the experience was about relationships. \u201cAt the time it was our only sports team at Owen, and it brought together people from different friend groups,\u201d he says. \u201cMarty was one of the guys,\u201d says Peter Veruki, Owen\u2019s Director of Corporate Relations. \u201cHe\u2019d drink beer with students, take them to the old Bluegrass Inn or SATCO. He was accessible, and there was nothing pompous about him.\u201d Geisel also cherished the diversity of the Owen community and readily supported new student initiatives, such as the Global Food Festival, which began during his tenure.<\/p>\n But at first, Clock remembers, \u201cDean Geisel wasn\u2019t totally on board with the idea\u201d of a rugby club\u2014the first sports team at Owen that competed beyond the campus intramural leagues. At Clock\u2019s request, Geisel came down to the pitch one Saturday and watched a game. Underwood recalls that the dean looked proud when he saw the team sporting Vanderbilt colors, with jerseys that read \u201cOwen Old Boys Rugby Club.\u201d<\/p>\n When he realized the commitment that the students had made, financing the club\u2019s gear and travels themselves, Geisel became not only a supporter but a champion. The team made him their honorary coach and gave him a silver whistle. Geisel enlisted local businesses to provide modest financial backing and found money to help pay for the trip to Duke.<\/p>\n What meant even more than monetary support, though, was his physical presence, remembers Mike Vermilion, BS\u201995, MBA\u201999, Finance Director at Victoria\u2019s Secret. Though a weakened heart kept him from working a full schedule in 1998, Geisel, who had played football at Case Western University, was more than an occasional attendee at the club\u2019s Saturday matches. Veruki remembers standing alongside him, cheering on the team, whistle around his neck, on one cold, nasty day. \u201cI\u2019d like to think that if Marty had been 10 years younger and in good health, he\u2019d have been out there with them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Initially for most of the players, the games were learning experiences as much as competitions. \u201cTom [Clock] and John [Underwood] would coach us while we were playing: \u2018Run and do this. Get in the scrum,\u2019\u201d Barr explains. \u201cWe had a lot of spunk and energy that allowed us to overcome the deficiencies in experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, wins remained only an aspiration as the Old Boys took on teams from across the region, like the 101st Airborne, in preparation for the big MBA tournament at Duke. \u201cIn most games we were reasonably well-matched, and in a few we did a lot better than we thought we would,\u201d Turner says. Then there were games that all the players still remember, like the 76\u20130 thrashing they received at the hands of Nashville\u2019s semipro club team.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d wake up the next morning, and your whole body would be stiff as a board,\u201d Barr says. \u201cI was 29 or 30. After games I\u2019d start thinking, \u2018This is why rugby is a young man\u2019s sport.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Old Boys almost weren\u2019t allowed to compete in the Duke tournament, which was limited to 24 teams. \u201cWe had to convince them we were for real,\u201d Clock recalls, and the organizers weren\u2019t easily convinced. Renting a couple of vans and rooms in a seedy hotel, the 18 players from Owen arrived on Duke\u2019s campus \u201clooking like the Bad News Bears,\u201d Barr says.<\/p>\n The night before the competition began, there was a huge banquet for all the players. \u201cSome of the teams wore crazy, coordinated costumes, especially the ones from Europe, and they sang rowdy songs,\u201d Vermilion says.<\/p>\n Playing one game on a Saturday was rugged enough. The Duke tournament\u2019s first-day format involved three games. For a team with only three substitutes, it was a formula for disaster.<\/p>\n Before the 8 a.m. match against Cornell, Benji Ribault, an MBA exchange student from France who played one of the forward positions, led the team down to the pitch. \u201cHe got us going on a kind of ritual dance, elbowing and bumping each other, sort of like a mosh pit,\u201d Clock remembers. \u201cThe players from Cornell were looking at us like, \u2018Who are these guys?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n The Old Boys surprised the Ivy Leaguers. \u201cWe devastated them,\u201d Clock says. \u201cBlew them away.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps because Owen had been relegated to a small field at the tournament\u2019s periphery, their next opponents, from Wharton, hadn\u2019t noticed how well the upstarts from Nashville had performed. With more than 35 men available, Wharton opted to rest their first-line players, presuming they would not be needed against Vanderbilt. They repented of their choice in the second half, but it didn\u2019t matter. The Old Boys won again.<\/p>\n The Haitians have a proverb: \u201cBeyond the mountains, more mountains.\u201d For Owen, beyond Cornell and Wharton came Harvard at 4 p.m. By then the Old Boys had been promoted to the equivalent of center court at Wimbledon, a field of beautiful Bermuda grass that was Duke\u2019s best. Vanderbilt had suddenly become the buzz of the tournament.<\/p>\n Clock recalls that Harvard had \u201cabout 60 guys\u2014three full sides and a set of backups,\u201d compared to Vanderbilt\u2019s 18. Harvard won.<\/p>\n \u201cI really think we could have beaten Harvard were we not so beaten up,\u201d Underwood says. \u201cWe had some guys who couldn\u2019t even play.\u201d<\/p>\n The Old Boys\u2019 run came to an end the next day against the London Business School. At least that\u2019s how Turner remembers it. Clock believes the loss came against a different opponent. No written records are available, and no one remembers for sure. Even after just 10 years, the details become blurred.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most enduring record is a photo of the Old Boys that sits in a spare bedroom that Kathy Geisel uses as an office. Of all the items that decorate the suburban Dallas room, mostly related to hunting and to Nashville, the photo was Marty Geisel\u2019s favorite. It was a gift from the team, and they all signed it. The photo occupied a prominent spot in Geisel\u2019s office at Owen until the day he died. The whistle hangs by itself in a closet. \u201cEvery time I open the door, I see it,\u201d Kathy says.<\/p>\n Clock has a few old pictures, too, from the Old Boys days. But mostly what the players have carried with them are memories. Vermilion remembers a game trip to Memphis, Tenn., when they camped out in a cotton field near the Mississippi River. Barr vividly recalls a nose-breaking, blood-gushing hit that William deButts, MBA\u201998, laid on a Wharton player. Clock remembers Mike Butler, MBA\u201998, who played wing. \u201cSoaking wet he probably weighed 135 pounds,\u201d Clock says. \u201cAgainst Harvard he went up against this guy who easily weighed 100 pounds more, but he fearlessly locked heads, wrapped his arms around the guy and took him down.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the founding players graduated after that first season, in the spring of 1998. Owen fielded a team for three more years. As an alumnus, Clock continued to play\u2014once flying back from a consulting assignment in Jakarta, Indonesia, so he could join the team for the Duke tournament.<\/p>\n By the 1999 tournament, the Old Boys had lost their champion. Geisel died of a massive coronary in February of that year, after conducting a town hall meeting at Owen. He took questions while seated because he didn\u2019t have the strength to stand for the duration. \u201cHe looked terrible,\u201d Veruki recalls. \u201cBrent Turner asked him, \u2018Marty, how are you? We\u2019re worried about you.\u2019 Marty\u2019s response was, \u2018Not good. But this is my job, and I\u2019m here for Owen.\u2019 I\u2019ll always remember that.\u201d Veruki doesn\u2019t have to add that Geisel\u2019s persevering attitude was just what you\u2019d expect from a rugby coach.<\/p>\n In a number of ways the rugby experience has stayed with the Old Boys. To a man, they remember the camaraderie and the euphoria of accomplishing together something improbable. And as they progressed from Owen to an array of distinguished careers, the lessons they learned helped shape their outlooks on life.<\/p>\n Barr has never forgotten losing games to local club teams whose players were older and slower than the 20-somethings from business school. \u201cTheir experience and knowledge made them formidable opponents,\u201d he says. \u201cNothing is better than pure experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Clock, who spent five years with Accenture and another five in health care before starting his own consulting business in 2008, says the rugby experience was formative. Getting 20 diverse, mostly inexperienced guys into a committed team, organizing practices, scheduling games and handling logistics was \u201ca leadership experience no one can teach you,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the most important thing for those of us who played on that side is that we developed a friendship that went beyond the walls of Owen. Those are guys I still keep in touch with. I don\u2019t think you can replace that.\u201d<\/p>\n Underwood, who has spent the last 11 years at the Goldman Sachs office in San Francisco, was in the top of his class at the firm. When he showed up for his first day of work, he says, \u201calmost everyone else was from a top-ranked B-school. It was a little intimidating, but soon I realized I could compete with these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a lesson he\u2019d already learned, in a different context, on a rugby pitch.<\/p>\n![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2010\/05\/Rugby-2.jpg\" "\\"Rugby-2\\"")
\nBut for the new converts to the game, the effort was worth it, both as outlet and opportunity. \u201cWhen you were stressed out from school and then got slammed to the ground 40 or 50 times, the stress didn\u2019t matter so much after that,\u201d Turner says.<\/p>\n
\nThe diversity, camaraderie and commitment of the players helped make a fan of Martin Geisel, Dean of the Owen School at the time. Geisel, who had come to Vanderbilt in 1987, was both a mentor and a friend to the students. For him, says his wife, Kathy, students were the most important part of the school.<\/p>\n\nI\u2019d like to think that if Marty [Geisel] had been 10 years younger and in good health, he\u2019d have been out there with them.<\/h2>\n
\u2014Peter Veruki<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/p>\nThe Tournament<\/h2>\n
Enduring Memories<\/h2>\n
\nThe most important thing for those of us who played on that side is that we developed a friendship that went beyond the walls of Owen. Those are guys I still keep in touch with.<\/h2>\n
\u2014Tom Clock<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Where Are They Now?<\/h2>\n
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