As a rugby player and coach for many years, I learned about the New Zealand tradition of performing the Maori warrior Haka dance before matches. The dance, which involves the players standing in a semi-circle facing their opponent, is performed prior to the start of the game as a way of intimidating the other team.
The New Mexico State University rugby team which I coached for many years witnessed one of these performances in person when a touring side from Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand, stopped in Las Cruces to play the local college team. Rugby is the national sport of New Zealand, and since young men there began playing the sport about the same age as our kids begin playing soccer or T-Ball, my NMSU team didn’t stand much of a chance to win.
The dance is the trademark of the New Zealand national rugby team, the All Blacks (so named because of their black uniforms). The All Blacks are considered to be one of top teams in the rugby throughout the world. But even though it was originally associated with rugby, the Haka has started to be performed for many other things. I even watched an episode of comedian Conan O’Brien participating in a Haka with a community group when he did a stop in New Zealand on his world travel series.
With participants beating on their chests in a low crouch and occasionally sticking out their tongues with their eyes wide open in an intimidating fashion, the dance begins with the words “Ka mate! Ka mate!” which means “it is death, it is death.”
Similar dances are performed throughout many islands in the Pacific, all with the intent of frightening any opponent that the indigenous people may face.
I mention this because something of rugby has apparently crept into the small village of Hatch north of Las Cruces in Dona Ana County.
A 16-year-old football player for the Hatch Valley High School Bears is now performing a rugby-style drop kick for point after touchdown conversions. The player, Peet Bothma, is from South Africa, whose Springboks national rugby team is also a perennial world powerhouse.
They don’t perform the Haka in South Africa, but they do start the kids young in learning the game, which is what happened to Peet before moving to the United States.
Bothma says he was at a summer football camp when he decided to try a rugby style drop kick over the goal posts.
“The coaches saw it,” Bothma said in an interview with the Albuquerque Journal. “One coach looked it up to see if it was legal.”
Turns out, it is.
Bothma moved to New Mexico two years ago with his mother and younger brother to join his father who is a chile farmer in nearby Salem.
Bothma said since there was no rugby in Hatch, he though he would try football.
“I had no experience (with football),” he told the Journal. “I just wanted to play something where I could hit someone.”
At 6 feet, 200 pounds, Bothma is more than just a kicker. He’s an outstanding linebacker and fullback, according to Hatch coach Manny Rodriguez. But he’s darn good at point after kicks. Though the middle of the season, he has made 24 of 36 attempts, using a ball which is much more difficult to control than the fatter, rounder rugby ball.
With rugby-style punters growing in number the collegiate ranks and the NFL, maybe Bothma is on track to start a new trend in in football using a drop kick for PATs.
aero-cordero.com 