Touch rugby takes hold in Baldwin Park

By the time the egg-shaped ball makes it from one side of the field to the goal at the other during an Orlando Touch Rugby match, it’s likely traveled through the hands of players born in nearly every corner of the world.

Communication on the pitch is tinged with accents varying from islander to South African.

“We have more accents out here than the United Nations,” said three-year Orlando Touch Rugby player Leela Sirotkin.

“That ball that’s coming to you could have passed through the hands of seven or eight nations,” added OTR President Nate Spears.

For seven years locals and foreigners alike have descended on Baldwin Park’s Blue Jacket Park every Sunday for pickup games of touch rugby.

New Zealander Mark Booth, who now lives in Audubon Park, is an original member of the OTR team. He said team members arrive not only from international backgrounds, but also from far-flung areas of Central Florida, just to play. Booth said the team doesn’t currently have any Baldwin Parkers on the roster, but frequently draws in people from neighborhoods farther away, including Kissimmee and Dr. Phillips looking for an outlet in a sport, they say, is under appreciated in America.

“It was like a gift when I found out they play out here,” said Seta Koroitamudu, who grew up playing rugby in Fiji.

“Yeah, the gift that keeps on giving when you wake up sore Monday morning,” Booth added with a laugh as members milled around in the sweltering sunshine for a weekly meet-up in mid-August.

Orlando Touch Rugby takes the tackling out of what is often referred to as one of the most violent sports in the world.

“A lot of us retired to this after we were done with tackle,” Spears said. “It probably helps extend our lives a couple years.”

Other members come out to practice for the first time never having touched a rugby ball. Chuck Brandon said a neighbor of his convinced him to come out to Blue Jacket for practice for the first time. The only slightly similarly shaped ball he’d touched was an American football, when he played in tackle teams in high school and touch teams later in life.

“I almost had heat stroke the first time I came out … but I came out again and again the next weekends for some reason,” Brandon said, shaking his head with a laugh.

Brandon said touch rugby gives middle-aged guys like him a cardiovascular workout that other sports don’t offer, no matter what position you’re in, he said, you’re always on the move. Players sub out when they need water breaks, sending in a replacement from the sidelines, like in ice hockey. But out here, temperatures during the summer top out at nearly three digits.

Out on the field, a Scotsman passes the ball – always backward or sideways, never forward – to an Australian who places it down for a South African to scoop up and run with downfield, juking and spinning to avoid the touch of an American defender.

Booth said Orlando Touch Rugby gives foreigners a connection back to their homelands, while also moving the game forward and outward into the community getting more locals involved.

“Most people here don’t even know what rugby really is,” he said. “But we want everyone, if they’re interested in finding out, just show up.”

They promise not to tackle you — at least not on purpose.