Three weeks before a former Gators football player was scheduled to depart, making his dream come true, an earthquake nearly destroyed his destination.
Buildings crumbled, streets buckled and as many as 159 people perished in a 6.3 magnitude quake that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, on Feb. 22.
A day and a phone call later, Troy Epps already knew what he was going to do.
Like any weight room fanatic, he doesn’t look like the kind a person who would be scared of much.
His bulky arms and upper body appear almost disproportionate to his 6-foot frame.
Even though he’s a big guy, Epps doesn’t quite look like a lineman anymore.
He lost 40 pounds of his football weight by playing club rugby at UF, and he did it so well, he was offered a shot to go train at a college in New Zealand.
Along with his tattoos and diamond studs, he projects an intimidating presence until he grins or talks about his playing days.
If Epps starts doing either, it’s hard to make him stop.
On the phone, Epps said the quake won’t ruin his second chance at a career in athletics.
His Kiwi coach told him the night before that most of the destroyed buildings were just old.
He will have nothing to worry about when he flies to Wellington, New Zealand, on March 15.
“I already bought my ticket anyways,” he said.
From touchdowns to tries
By the end of his final season playing football for the Gators, Epps’ career had become a statistic.
He had weathered the weekly workouts, the weekends spent on the bench and the months of rehab for a wrecked knee to finally crack Florida’s defensive line rotation in his last year of eligibility.
Yet, his efforts still weren’t enough. Epps’ NFL Pro Day came and went.
There were no scouts salivating at his 40-yard-dash time. No agents were stalking him around Gainesville.
He had become one of the estimated 8,690 college football players each year, according to the NFL Players Union, who are told they will never see a Sunday in uniform.
“I come from a school that is renowned for football, for sending people to the NFL,” Epps said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of those people. I worked for it, though, but I still wasn’t chosen.”
He could have stayed at UF, taken two more classes and received his Family, Youth and Community Sciences degree, or he could head north to try his luck in the Canadian Football League.
“I felt like a degree was more important,” Epps said. “So, I came back to school and finished up.”
Even with a goal set in his mind, Epps became impatient with being a student unless the tag of athlete accompanied it.
He wanted to stay in shape somehow, so he decided it was time to start playing something — anything — again.
Unfortunately, he found there aren’t many university club teams for a 260-pound behemoth with a mentality meant for contact sports can revel in.
Games with Frisbees and pretend zombies usually don’t suit people with arms like Howitzer cannons.
Epps was in need of something challenging.
As he first read down the list of Florida’s club teams, nothing stood out.
Then, he found UF Rugby.
Into the ruck
Epps had never really heard of the sport before. It didn’t sound like anything an American would play, let alone someone who grew up deep in the backwoods of the South Carolina Piedmont.
After his first practice, though, he could tell rugby was his game.
“Not to take anything away from football, but they had some really tough players out there,” he said. “It’s a real man’s sport. There’s no blocking in it, none whatsoever, and there’s no pads. It’s basically like you’re putting your body on the line.”
Within a few weeks, Epps had made his way up through the backup and reserve rugby teams.
Despite his limited knowledge of the game, he was too talented and too naturally gifted to be left off Gator Rugby’s “A” side for very long.
He also quickly earned a new nickname: Tank.
“We had to move him fast because he couldn’t play on the lesser teams because he was just too big, he could hurt someone,” Gator Rugby assistant coach Mike Lane said.
“His physical presence was just impressive. He could do anything.”
After asking Epps if he would like to try to make a new career out of rugby, Lane sent game tape to Scott Hanson, head rugby coach at Linwood College in Christchurch, to see if he would be interested in taking a look at the former football player.
The coach replied, impressed by what he saw on the tape. He offered Epps a free ride and financial aid to fly out to New Zealand and play for the school, while also training with famed All-Blacks scrum coach Mike Cron.
“It felt awesome. I never thought in my life that I’d go across the world to play a sport that I’d never knew existed in America,” Epps said. “I just felt so privileged. So, hopefully, I can progress in the game and make a name for myself.”
The plan is for Epps to train at the college through the summer, starting this month with Cron and two younger players from the All-Blacks.
“They’re brothers. They’re both weight room nuts just like Tank is, and they are all the same size,” Lane said. “He’ll fit in well there with his personality and his devotion to athletics.”
Epps will also get a chance to watch and interact with some of the top international players and teams over the summer when New Zealand hosts the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
His dream now is to be on the next USA Eagles squad and participate in the cup four years from now.
But Epps knows doing so will likely require a professional career overseas, meaning more time away from his family in South Carolina.
Leaving home for the scrum
Epps has three loves in his life: his mom, his sister and his girlfriend.
But recently, he added rugby to that list.
At first, it was difficult to explain to his mother that he would be leaving their home in Union, S.C., after he had already left twice in the past four years: once for junior college in Kansas and the other time when he transferred to UF.
“She doesn’t want me to leave South Carolina, so to tell her that I want to leave for a whole ‘nother country, it was, ‘No. No, I don’t want you to go,’” Epps said.
He missed opportunities in the past, though. Epps suffered a torn ACL during the Gators’ 2008 season.
Later that year, he would have to watch on the sidelines as his teammates beat Oklahoma for a national championship.
“If I would have played rugby before I played football, I would’ve had a completely different mentality for that, for football,” he said. “Things would’ve been so different.”
The sport demands perfect tackling: nothing too high, or it’s a foul; nothing too sloppy or by the shoestrings, unless the defender wants to risk injury.
“When I went out there and saw how competitive it is, I got more intrigued with it, and I just wanted to play. Like, I just fell in love with rugby,” he said.
After Epps explained all of this to his mother, she was finally convinced.
“Go and chase your dreams” was all she said.
Something left in the tank
Before he leaves for New Zealand, Epps made sure to thank his former teammates at Florida in person for all they’ve done to help him: for accepting him into the rugby culture and not casting him aside as some hotshot from the football team.
“That’s who I’m playing for, guys like Darrell [Meckley] and ‘Pepper’ [Matias Groetaers] and my man Lucas [Baistrocchi]. Those are my boys,” Epps said. “They are the people who sat with me and showed me how to play this game.”
Epps drove almost seven hours from his home in Union to watch UF Rugby take on Georgia on Feb. 5.
As he paced the sidelines, he asked his coaches to let him throw on a uniform and get into the game.
He chatted up former teammates and some of the 50 or so spectators. Afterward, his friends asked him if he was coming out with them later to celebrate the team’s 55-10 demolition of the Bulldogs.
All he could do was smile and nod.
“In rugby, you might not be the best player out there, but everyone loves you the same,” Epps said. “Everyone sees you just the same.”
No matter how the next six months or six years of his rugby career play out, Epps knows he is now in the worldwide rugby fraternity.
Epps has finally found the solace every athlete craves.
His aspiring career may fade out at any moment, just like it did with football. He knows that, as does anyone who’s been given a second chance.
The difference is, now the game never has to end.
