The Virginia Cardinals win the Old Boys 50+ at Aspen Ruggerfest for a lost teammate

The team walked off the pitch at the Aspen Ruggerfest a year ago, beaten and bruised, vowing to return in 2007 to make amends for letting a perfect season slip away.

One loss.

For the over-50 Virginia Cardinals Old Boys, falling short of their self-proclaimed triple crown -- three classic rugby tournaments in the span of seven months, all of which they'd won in 2005 -- was motivation enough to be perfect this year.

The drive for excellence took on a much more profound meaning, however, in late March when one of the team's leaders, Lance Van de Castle, died in a car accident near his home in Madison, Va. "We came here this weekend to win for him," said Todd Musick, a textile engineer from Bennettsville, S.C. "We commemorated the tournament to him."

Just a month earlier, Van de Castle -- a towering lock, or second row forward, well-known in Virginia rugby circles -- had been celebrating on the pitch in South Florida after the over-50 Cards bulled their way to another championship trophy at the annual Fort Lauderdale Ruggerfest, the first of the three triple crown stops.

A select side of players, most of whom played with or against one another for years in the Virginia and Potomac rugby unions, the Cardinals certainly had that talent for their goal this season. Van de Castle's death gave them renewed purpose. Sporting jerseys with "Lance" patches on the right sleeve, the over-50 side won a repeat championship in August at the prestigious 100-team Can-Am Tournament in Saranac Lake, N.Y.

Then it was off to Colorado with the Cardinals' over-45 and over-35 sides -- some 90 players strong -- for four days of matches and carousing at the most storied of domestic rugby tournaments, the 40th annual Aspen Ruggerfest. The over-50 Cards won all three of their matches Thursday to earn the Sunday final.

The teammates spent Friday taking in the splendor of Aspen in early autumn -- and in the process visiting many of the town's finest watering holes -- before checking into bed early Saturday night. The team was all business Sunday morning when it arrived at Wagner Park in the heart of Aspen -- a sublime setting for a rugby pitch.

Against a Colorado Old Pokes team, which had lost 12 of its 32 players to injury over the weekend, the Cards ground out a 13-3 victory, behind a try from Musick. The match wasn't as close as the final score indicated, but that was of little consequence to Van de Castle's teammates and his wife, Karen, who watched from the sideline.

"We're very close and we lost a very, very close friend this year," added Lex MacCubbin, 60, of Union County, N.J., who booted a 3-point penalty kick and also was true on a conversion kick in the win. "This year was a very emotional year, and maybe in some ways it ramped us up maybe too much because we wanted to win so badly."

Rugby breeds a camaraderie that is arguably unmatched among other team sports, and through the years Ruggerfest has been the consummate celebration of that sporting spirit. It was evident after the final whistle blew in the over-50 championship. During the match, opposing players attacked one another with seemingly no regard for their aging bodies, slamming opponents to the ground and plowing into one another while fighting for field position. Afterward, there were only handshakes and offers to share a few beers later on.

Old Pokes president Fred Alexander said he even urged some of his players during the weekend to buy beers for the Cardinals out on the town -- in the name of good sportsmanship, of course. "We were kidding some of our guys, all of our 45s, saying, 'Any Virginia guy that's a 50-year-old, if you buy them a beer, we'll buy you a beer," joked Alexander, a Denver resident who helped form the Pokes, a select side of older Colorado players, in 1990. "That's the kind of fun we have."

It's that camaraderie, MacCubbin said, that makes it so hard to give up the game. "A lot of these guys I played against 20 years ago and we beat the crap out of each other," he said. "After the game, when it's all done, you're friends. That's rugby. It's like a big brotherhood."

MacCubbin, who works as a scientist for a drug company, actually quit playing at 50, only to be lured out of retirement five years later by one of his friends. "I say to my wife every year, 'I think this is the last one,'" he said. "She always says, 'Why? Are you still having fun?' She'll say, 'Well if you don't do the rugby, what are you going to do, sit around and watch TV?'… I don't like running. This gives me a reason and a goal to stay in shape so I can get out there and play."

Born with a name perfect for rugby, Dennis Stoneman of Akron, Ohio, echoed MacCubbin's words. A firefighter who gave up rugby in 1998 after breaking his neck when a ceiling collapsed on him, Stoneman couldn't resist the pull of the pitch when an old friend called him up a few years ago.

He'd lost 25 pounds, was in pretty good shape and had essentially "run out of excuses" not to play. "After the first game after I'd come back out, my friend asked me, 'Don't you feel like a man again?' said Stoneman, 52. "I played soccer in college, and I'd been playing league soccer in the over-30 over-40 leagues, but the camaraderie was never even close to this. Now I'm back into rugby, and it actually does feel good again. "It still hurts, though."

Of course, bruises are never more welcome than after a big win. After the over-50 Cards earned their championship trophy, they watched their two "junior varsity" teams -- the over-35 and over-45 sides -- vie for their own titles in their respective championship games. The over-35 Cards came up short against the Kansas City Blues, while the over-45 team rolled to a 26-6 victory over the Mountain Old Boys from Saranac Lake. In the win, front-row players Greg Robinette, a loose head prop, and Matt "Tatonka" Szkotakm, a tight head prop, scored tries. The role of a prop is akin to playing on the offensive line in football, and is typically a thankless job in which glorious moments are few and far between.

So Robinette, 45, was more than happy to recount his scoring run after ending up with the ball about five yards from the try line. "I got the ball, and there was absolutely no one in front of me," he said. "That's only happened to me once in the past 75 years, so I thought I would take advantage of it and fall. Gravity took over and I fell right into the goal."

Just like for their older brethren, the win for the over-45 Cardinals made up for a loss in the final from a year earlier. It was a win that Robinette said was a long time coming, and one that gave him and his older brother, Hillary, 46, plenty of ammunition to use against Andrew Cuomo, a good friend who played on the losing Mountain Old Boys side. "We consistently outscore him on the field, and we consistently outscore him with women as well," Robinette said. "Seriously, though, I've been out here like five years in a row, and I've been second place more than I care to remember. This feels good."

It felt even better when the tournament's Most Valuable Player trophy was awarded later in the afternoon. For a club that put three teams in four of the Sunday finals, it was only fitting that the one player who had fueled such success be awarded the honor. Even if he was only there in spirit, on the 40th anniversary of Ruggerfest, Lance Van de Castle was MVP.

The announcement spawned a rousing cheer. Van de Castle's wife wiped tears from her eyes. The honor for her husband was suprising, but then it wasn't, considering the company involved.

Brothers are known to always look out for one another.