Pasadena Rugby Club:Is There a Doctor on the Pitch?

Aaron Tanner, Doc Smookler, Doc Balkian, Doc Bryant and Nursedude

Believe it or not, on the Pasadena Old Boys, or OWLS(For Old War Lords), there are 5 of us who work at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. Aaron is a Speech Pathologist, I'm a nurse, and 3 Medical Doctors, Dr Balkian, Dr Smookler and Dr Bryant-who is also the President of the Pasadena Rugby Club.



Dr Balkian actually ended up scoring a try in the old boys game. It felt good to play. I actually like the new Crouch-Touch-Set call for scrums. It seemed like we had fewer resets of scrums, and we ended up doing well in both the scrums and the line outs.

Me doing a lift on a line out-the one without the scrum cap

We had a great time getting a run in for the Old Boys, and beating the combined LARFC/Godzilla RFC in a match played in fantastic conditions. (I've been here in LA for 18 months and I STILL don't get sick of palm trees)

After the game, we rooted for the Pasadena A team against the LA Rugy Club-which did not need Japanese Mercenaries, thank you very much.

It was a very hard hitting game where a total of 3 LA Rugby Club members needed to get stitches for some nasty cuts....

One of the LARFC guys who ended up getting stitched up by Doc Bryant.

This kept Doctor Bryant very, very busy as he stitched up the 3 wounded LARFC players-for no charge. Talk about sportsmanship. It's not quite the same as bringing all of the beer and food-but it's something nice we can offer our opponents.

Some Rugby Clubs may have deals with athletic trainers, but the Pasadena Rugby Club is the first one that I have seen where where we have so much medical support-just in case.