Engineer Clayton Parr, the 31-yearold captain of the Chattanooga Rugby Football Club, knows about Monday morning blues. Fall through spring, he’s at his desk pressing the calculator with battered fingers, wincing from a broken rib or smiling away a shiner.
“Sometimes it’s purely mano-a-mano,” says Parr of his full-contact Saturday mud fests. “But it’s fantastic exercise, and I’ve always enjoyed the competition.” Since 1978, Chattanooga’s rugby team has competed fairly unsuccessfully to win the hearts of Scenic City sports fans. As enthusiasts have long supported local baseball, softball, basketball, football, soccer, bicycling, kayaking, bouldering, bird watching and even disc golf – local ruggers lined up, hooked and jumped alone.
Chattanooga’s fierce-fighting rugby team gets down and dirty this year at newly restored Montague ParkNow, the scrums are fielding a new level of respect and attention. Following an undefeated 2010-2011 season, the team has reeled in more than $15,000 in donations. The winning streak may have swayed donors. “But it was mainly the quality of the guys we have in the program,” says 32-year-old project engineer and coach Kirk Neubauer. “If they were dirt bags nobody would give them any money.”
Donors also gave the team a new home. Chattanooga Rugby boasts a brotherly network of about 250 “old boys” (retired players). One, Steve Lofty, the 61-year-old owner of Lofty Construction, pestered city officials to find the club a permanent base. Parks and Recreation staff suggested Montague Park – the Southside landfill/ softball complex closed in 2003 because its 1960s-era toxic-methane-blocking-cap failed. The sticking point? The city didn’t have $2 million to fix it.
Luckily, Lofty – a rugger and excavator – knew his dirt. For years he sampled job sites seeking the perfect gravel-and-clay combo. Finally, the mother lode appeared at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga library site, at the corner of Douglas and Vine. Last year, Lofty donated the transport of more than 8,000 cubic yards – 800 truckloads – of dirt to the park. Volunteers from Method Architecture and Barge, Waggoner, Sumner & Cannon’s local office also contributed a design that coordinates the fields with a new large sculpture garden, featuring the works of Chattanooga sculptor John Henry, in a separate section of the 47-acre park. About 90 percent of the cost to fix the park, says Lofty, was borne by community volunteers.