The coach coaxing Kitsap's rugby scene along

The sport of rugby is played all over the world, and professionally in the United States after the 2018 launche of Major League Rugby. The Pacific Northwest is key to that history, with Seattle's club, the Seawolves, having won the league first two championships.

Even that early success hasn't earned the Seawolves the public acclaim of the region’s other professional teams. Not even close, even as they open another season at the Starfire Complex in Tukwila.

The local rugby story also is often similarly obscured. But the game is played in Kitsap and a dedicated group has kept it going for around 40 years.

Deane Shephard, who I consider the father of Kitsap Rugby, says the sport started in the area in the 1970s, then took a firm hold in the mid-1980s when David Schneegas started the Renegades club, in 1986. Shephard came along three years later and, other than the four years he was in Germany, has been the face of rugby in the area since.

Sometimes it’s been difficult to get enough bodies out, but the Kitsap Rugby organization carries on. The team has played in the Pacific Northwest Rugby Football Union, but falling participation meant its men's team, the Renegades, couldn't field enough players (15 are needed) to make the schedule this year. So Kitsap Rugby is on the outs with the PNRFU until it can prove it can make its league commitment.

That challenge falls to Oliver (Ollie) Otterbeck, coach of the men’s team, and he's making progress. There are still exhibition matches scheduled, including two upcoming at View Ridge Elementary in Bremerton, at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 8, and again at 1 on Saturday, April 15. And at a match in late February Otterbeck had 22 players in a game against Valley Kangaroos, a Division II team (the top division) out of Sea-Tac.

Winning is the name of the game, but in the world Otterbeck is operating the key word is development, for the men's team as well as the high school team under the Kitsap Rugby banner. He wants to see his guys get better each time out, knowing the score probably isn’t going to be in their favor. His team scored five points and the Kangaroos were close to 50, if not more, at that match last month.

“The score doesn’t really matter,” he says. “At this point I’m looking to how our guys perform. I am looking for performance and then can make the necessary adjustments so they can perform better.”

Otterbeck, a 1994 graduate of South Kitsap, wrestled at SK. He weighed about 190 pounds, but wrestled in the 275-pound heavyweight division — meaning a good record was a challenge.

“I’m not saying I was horrible, but I wasn’t great either,” he says. "I was a very average wrestler.”

He didn’t get into rugby until a couple of buddies urged him to try it after high school. Otterbeck says he never had the desire to play football as a kid, but he took to rugby. Despite the speed and hitting, and lack of protective equipment, Otterbeck says he found it safer than football.

“You don’t have all the battle armor that gives football a (false) sense of security,” Otterbeck says.

There are two main types of rugby — League and Union. League uses 13 players and is considered rougher. Union uses 15 players a side, and is widely played in the United States, including in the PNRFU.

Otterbeck took some work diversions before landing his current position in 2012 at Puget Sound Shipyard as Inventory Management Specialist. He got his associates degree from Olympic College and had plans to become a teacher, but that turned into a career at the shipyard.

Otterbeck played rugby, usually as the prop, a sort of running back. His playing days are basically over, although he plays with guys from all over Western Washington in an older league and will pop in to play with his Renegades when he's needed to fill out the roster.

Shephard played the prop position, and looked like one, too. At 5-9 and over 200 pounds, Shephard was a rough and tough prop, a no-necker squatty body.

“Props tend to be big-legged,” says Shephard. “Seabury Blair (former outdoor editor at the Kitsap Sun) once described me as a stump with legs like tree trunks. “

Otterbeck, who doesn’t quite measure up to Blair’s description, did something you would not expect from an athletic male. He took dance lessons.

“Dancing gives you flexibility, strength and ability to move your body in a fluid manner.," Shephard says. “Dance is useful in rugby to the point I wish now, 60 years later, I had taken dance when I was younger. Of course, the younger me would have laughed.”

A chance to take dance lessons came about when Otterbeck was at Olympic College. Looking for an elective, Otterbeck spotted it.

“They were classes of ballet,” says Otterbeck. “It was a great experience and increased my flexibility, increased by footwork on the pitch. I was more nimble.”

It wasn’t by chance he took ballet. There were stories on ESPN and in Sports Illustrative about professional football players taking ballet to help them with flexibility and balance.

“It helped me in the open field and my normal position and it definitely improved my play,” says Otterbeck.

Now almost three decades after he elected to join his buddies and try the sport called rugby, Otterbeck has become a grizzled veteran that can teach it and get you much better. He knows all the tricks and has a boatload of knowledge. All he needs is more guys on the pitch. Some days there are as few as eight out for the twice weekly practices on the field at the Bangor base.

Because he was born in the Philippines, Otterbeck is eligible to play for the country’s national rugby team, which is what he did in 2007 in the Five Nations Division 3 Tournament.

“We beat Guam and almost beat India,” says Otterbeck. “Two years after I played Philippines moved up to Division I.”

Otterbeck also was assistant coach for the All-Navy team, which last year played the All-Army team coached by Shephard. The All-Navy team consisted of players from the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard and was nicknamed “Old Salts.” The All-Army team consisted of Army, Air Force and Space Force guys and was called “Flying Tigers.”

Asked who won, Shephard answered, “That is a silly question.”

The rugby Otterbeck oversees for the men in Kitsap Rugby battle over a pitch with guys learning how to take a blow and deliver one. It’s a process that has gone one for nearly three decades for Otterbeck, and he’s not about to stop.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Coach Ollie Otterbeck leads Kitsap Renegades rugby club