All I can say is WOW!!!!!! What an experience I have had the last month. About a month ago I was doing my daily routine of working out, managing Crossfit San Diego, playing rugby, and running the daily errands. Then in the afternoon of one of these days in January I get a call to my cell. It was from an UNKNOWN number. I ignored it!!! I got another call again. I ignored it!!! I don’t answer private or unknown phone calls. A little time went by and then again the UNKNOWN call. I thought to myself. Who is this? So I answered it. There was a guy with an accent asking for me. I thought great, some type of scam or something. I said, “Yeah this is JP. Whats up?” He said that he was with the Mexican Federation of Rugby and had gotten my name and number from a friend who said I was a good player. He then said, that they were looking for players to try out for their Mexican National Rugby Team specifically for the upcoming USA Rugby 7s event being held at PETCO (Home of the SD Padres) February 14th-15th. I thought at first that this might be a joke. The more I talked with the guy the more I believed it. He told me to fly my way down to Mexico City, try out, and if I made the team that they would take care of everything else. I got off the phone and was kind of in a state of shock. Here is my chance to play at the top level in the world. An opportunity of a lifetime and a long time dream. Amazing!!!
I went to Mexico City. When I got there a guy picked me up saying he was the Manager of the team and then gave me all the specifics. I ended up staying at the Mexican Olympic Training Center in Mexico City. That was awesome. 3 meals a day, gym, pool, track, rings, everything you see in the Olympics at your fingertips. Athletes training all around in their own sports. I took tons of pictures and met some great people. Try outs and practices went well. I stayed focused and gave it my all. It was a little tougher running up there at altitude. Mexico City sits at 2300 meters above sea level. That is something like 7000 feet. That is rough. We then played some scrimmages at 2800 meters above sea level. I thought I was going to die. you make on break and you feel like someone stole your lungs or like you just finished FRAN. Not the nest feeling. So after a couple weeks of training 2 times a day and playing games, they announced the team that would be going to San Diego for the IRB 7s event (USA Rugby 7s). I MADE THE TEAM!!!
So now I’m thinking, I am part of the National Mexican Rugby team. I am going to be playing in front of my home crowd in San Diego, against the best players in the world. WOW!!!
Made it back to San Diego a week prior to the event just a couple days before the team came in. I wanted to make sure I had everything at CFSD taken care of before the next week. I wanted to be able to focus only on the rugby. Once the team came in it was going to be Rugby non stop, training everyday. So here I am in San Diego Training with a National Rugby team getting ready for the biggest games of my life. Talk about exciting!!! The week of training was awesome! The whole week your in a hotel with all the other National teams looking at who is here and who isn’t. Seeing familiar faces you see on TV if your a rugby fan. Doing interviews and signing autographs at media events. Its all building up to that Saturday and Sunday event.
Then its here. Time to step on the field and see what your made out of. Our Saturday line up of games looked like this: Argentina at 940am, Fiji at 12, and Wales at 330pm. Talk about a tough pool to play in. Especially if your playing for your first time in the IRB. Needless to say the games didn’t go well for us. We lost all our matches. We ended up playing Scotland and Canada the next day. We lost those as well. But one of the highlights of the day was when we scored against Canada at the final second of the game. I hit this guy so hard that it messed up his pass and one of my teammates was able to touch the ball down in the try zone (End zone). It was the loudest that PETCO got all weekend. You couldn’t hear anything but people screaming their heads off. What a way to finish!!! Mexico is still relatively new to the Sport of Rugby and growing. They hope to have a solid team by 2011 for the Pan-Am games. Which if I have anything to do with it they will.
I played my heart out and made some big time hits. Even got in a run or two. Everyone that was there said I played very well and looked good out there. That was good to know. I didnt feel like it sometimes. Overall, it was an experience that I will never forget. It was an eye opener for me, meaning that if I want to play and be successful at that level then I need to train much, much harder. These guys are professionals! If I want to be good then I need to train like one. So this year is going to be a year of hard work, Olympic lifting, Crossfit, Sprinting and Agilities, and major recruiting. I have to find the best Rugby players here in America that are eligible to play for Mexico. That means being born there or having parents or grand parents from there. Next year is going to be a different year for the team, I look forward to being a part of it.
You never really understand the differences in competition until you experience them. I play at the top level of rugby here in the United States with OMBAC. That is a great level. Fast and hard. But when you go International its 10 times faster and harder. Everyone is big and fast. I guess its like when people compare football from high school, to college, to the NFL. Each level gets faster and harder. That is definitely the same for World Rugby.
Imagine if I would have never answered that call. 
