A Bona Rugby Legacy

Story by Rich Blake | Photos by Ron Raff Photography

 

One bright October afternoon this fall, the St. Bonaventure University men’s rugby team beat Penn State, taking down one of the most successful collegiate rugby programs in the nation – on their home turf.

For the Bonaventure side, it was yet another major milestone for a program that over the past two decades has risen steadily, surprisingly, to national prominence.

Rob Peraza would be proud.

Peraza earned both his bachelor’s (’94) and master’s degrees (’96) at Bona’s as well as utmost respect when the winger was named most valuable player on the ’93 rugby squad that won an Empire State (Small School Division) title.

Fond memories (beating Le Moyne in the championship) were often rehashed – and new ones, at spirited alumni matches, were made – as an extended crew of fast friends dragged themselves from McGraw-Jennings Field into adulthood. It was a long way from his apartment above Randy’s Up the River, but Peraza, by age 30, had made his way to the top of the Wall Street world.

On September 11, 2001, he was trading bonds for Cantor Fitzgerald. On the 104th floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower One.

Peraza was among the victims who perished in the terrorist attacks.

After that unimaginable day, outpourings of grief gave way to determined remembrances. No one would be forgotten.

Charities were formed. Events staged. Annual walks and races. And, of course, memorial golf outings. Lots of them. 

This is the story of one that’s been going strong for two decades, keeping ties bound, Peraza’s memory alive – and stoking a remarkable turnaround of the St. Bonaventure rugby program. Two dedicated scholarships in his name are earmarked for incoming recruits with as many as six students supported annually.

“There is a direct link between what we’ve been able to achieve on the field and the Peraza scholarships, unquestionably,” said men’s head coach Tui Osborne. “Because now we can recruit the kinds of players that previously weren’t available to us for a variety of reasons, financial reasons being among them. So yeah, you can say it leveled the playing field.”

Since Osborne arrived in 2014, Bonaventure rugby has dashed on to a national stage. The team ranks atop Division 1-A. Two years ago, Bonaventure won a Collegiate Rugby Championship (CRC) “7s” tournament (Bowl Bracket) – against the University of Notre Dame on national television.

THE GRINGO OPEN

The annual golf outing (dubbed “The Gringo Open,” a nod to Peraza’s nickname in college) was born in the summer of 2002 with the goal of bringing together an extended family to celebrate Peraza’s life. It was one embodied by a love of sports.

“Anything and everything,” his brother Neil said. “Didn’t matter what, he was a natural.”

Quiet, determined, Peraza was always proving himself. The family moved several times during the boys’ childhood. A Cuban immigrant, Robert Peraza Sr. worked as an IT manager for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, doing stints in Delaware, Colorado, Connecticut, and, by the late 1980s, in Norwich, New York, in Chenango County.

As a Norwich High School junior, 17-year-old Rob excelled at football, wrestling and tennis. (He golfed well, too). For his senior year, Peraza parlayed a Rotary Club scholarship into one year abroad in Johannesburg, South Africa. There he got a masterclass in rugby, from summer of 1989 through the summer of 1990. Then he came to Bona’s, an interest sparked innocently enough by some high school friends and later cemented by a memorable campus visit. 

Early in his freshman year, Peraza’s next-level rugby acumen and humble demeanor won over teammates. Fellow freshman Billy Kelly, a top player at rugby powerhouse Xavier High School in Manhattan, remembered being struck by “just what a super nice guy he was off the field – but such a fierce competitor on the field.”

After finishing his studies, Peraza, in 1995, moved to Cincinnati, where his family had, one last time, relocated; soon thereafter he set out for the Big Apple, landing a job at Refco Securities trading cocoa futures.

Eventually he wound up at Cantor Fitzgerald. 

ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIP ESTABLISHED

The flagship memorial scholarship – the Robert David Peraza Annual Scholarship at St. Bonaventure University – ties back to the first few weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Peraza’s devastated parents, Robert Sr. and Suzanne, and his two-and-a-half-years’ younger brother, Neil, created it almost immediately, coordinating with a core cadre of pals united in their intensity.  

“Rob Peraza’s legacy was going to carry on and we were going to make sure of it,” said classmate and event co-organizer John D’Arcy, ’95. “He was that good of a man.”  

At a sit-down at Connelly’s Pub in Midtown Manhattan, D’Arcy recalled, a plan quickly coalesced: Their friend’s twin passions, his school/sport, would be intertwined though an endowed rugby scholarship connected with an annual golf outing for the old gang held in the New York City area, at Dunwoodie Country Club in Yonkers. (Actually, it’s a public course and a gem at that, set against rolling green hills of lower Westchester County). 

The game plan set, Kelly took the ball and charged up field, lateraling assignments to D’Arcy, who arranged the venue, as well as to ’95 classmates Mike Minardi, Joe Zamparelli and Sean Mayer. The latter would skillfully take on the master of ceremonies role. Mindy (Coffey) Zamparelli, ’95, helped send mailers and collect cash (in the days before Facebook and Venmo) with all of the organizers going the extra yard to make the event a success.  

About 100 golfers showed up for the first outing and attendance all these years has stayed fairly, impressively, steady. Donations, from alumni around the country, have grown.

THE PUSH TO EXPAND

St. Bonaventure having one of the few rugby scholarships in the country didn’t necessarily just flip a switch; only a few recipients came into the fold during those initial years.

But, in time, there was a sense the program was on the right path.

“Knowing the alumni had our back, that motivated us, and raised expectations,” recalls Jon Garbin who played Bona rugby from 2009 to 2013.

The Clarence Picard-coached rugby teams of that era notched several landmark victories, including a win over the University at Buffalo in Bonaventure’s first-ever appearance as a Division 1-A rugby competitor, moving up from D2. That was in the fall of 2009.

Four years later, in 2013, the team, captained by Alex Brussard and featuring Garbin, Tim Hanna and Kevin McCorry (a Peraza scholarship recipient), advanced to the Elite 8 tournament, losing to Dartmouth University.

Bonaventure was now at least in the conversation in Division 1-A Rugby, at that time dominated by a handful of upper-echelon West Coast programs (e.g. University of California, Berkeley and Brigham Young University) and, on the East Coast, by the likes of Penn State, Army West Point and Kutztown University. The door had cracked open. And another key turning point loomed, courtesy of the Southern Hemisphere.

COACH TUI OSBORNE

Growing up in Suva, capital of the South Pacific island nation of Fiji and a hotbed of passionately played “footie,” Tui Osborne won rugby union accolades as a schoolboy during the 1990s. But he wasn’t winning over any scouts for the storied Flying Fijians national squad.

In 2000, Osborne, age 19, came to America, settling in Los Angeles where some relatives had relocated, opening the door to assimilation – within L.A.’s tight-knit rugger community, chiefly the San Fernando Valley RFC and Riverside Rugby Club. Small world, rugby, as doors opened in the Washington, D.C.-based super league, leading to a spot on the USA Eagles men’s national team (2006-2008). Osborne would go on to attend (on a scholarship) Life University where he played rugby and obtained a degree in sports exercise science.

At Atlanta-based Life, known for its chiropractic school and for its rugby team, Osborne made his bones as a coach, winning men’s collegiate championships in 2011 and 2014. Along the way (in D.C.), he met his future wife, Jessie.

“She was from the Buffalo area and we’d visit a lot,” Osborne said. “It began to feel like that’s where we were meant to be.” Osborne, feeling particularly far from home on some of these visits, nevertheless felt a connection to the area, falling in with the Buffalo Old Boys rugby club.

In winter of 2014, word of the talented Life coach moving to the Western New York area reached Bill Kelly, who’d spotted an item about it on a rugby social media feed.

Out of the blue, Kelly placed a call to bluntly ask: Any interest in coaching at St. Bonaventure? 

BONNIES MAKE AN IMPACT

Pleasantly surprised, instantly intrigued, Osborne agreed to visit campus.

By spring of 2014, Osborne on board as coach, the endowed scholarship had swollen to more than $100,000 in principal. A portion, 5% of total assets per year, was going to one student’s tuition across four years.

Ramping up, Peraza’s friends and family next created a second annual gift so that the golf event proceeds (about $35,000 annually) could be spread around to help more students attend the school. As many as six student-athletes could be put into the mix each fall. An influx of talent paid off.

In spring of 2019, the Bonaventure rugby team, led by a scholarship recipient, Jersey City, New Jersey-native Eamonn Matthews, made its first appearance in the Penn Mutual Collegiate Rugby 7s Championship, romping through early rounds en route to a stunning, come-from-behind-while-shorthanded win over the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

ESPN analysts were baffled, as were alumni watching around the country. The elite college rugby landscape had shifted. Bonaventure ranked eighth.

And how’s this for shocking: Following that stunning Penn State victory in October, the reconfigured National College Rugby polls put Bona’s at No. 1. The team beat perennial power Kutztown two weeks later and secured the No. 1 seed in the NCR tournament, where they drubbed Mary Washington, 39-7, in the first round Nov. 20. (They faced off with Kutztown again Dec. 4 with a berth in the national title game in Houston on the line. Both games were scheduled after the magazine went to press.)

“The impact of the Peraza scholarship can’t be overstated,” said Matthews, ’19, who signed a professional rugby contract with Rugby ATL in December 2020. He’s one of four Bona alumni/Peraza Scholarship recipients now playing Major League Rugby.

Another 2019 graduate, Kyle Ciquera, just re-signed with the MLR’s New England Free Jacks. John Sullivan, who earned both his bachelor’s (’15) and master’s degrees (’16) at Bona’s, has played professionally for NOLA Gold in New Orleans. Sullivan this past fall left for Atlanta. The Rugby ATL vice president who helped recruit him? It was McCorry, a Peraza rugby scholarship recipient.

SUCCESS AND TRIBUTE

The number of donor-established scholarships at St. Bonaventure totals more than 350 and these run the gamut in terms of size, years in existence and areas of focus. There are actually two rugby-related scholarships; the ones connected with the Peraza memorial efforts have grown substantially and, over these two decades, have helped roughly three dozen students attend St. Bonaventure and play rugby, according to Neil Peraza.

“Many of our supporters agree that helping students achieve educational dreams through a scholarship is one of the most rewarding investments they can make,” said Janet Glogouski, an SBU major gifts officer. “These scholarships benefit our students and their families, while keeping someone’s memory alive in a meaningful way. I think the Peraza Scholarship is an excellent example of that.”

The golf outing remains a solid draw and acts as a galvanizer for the rugby community, past and present, as well as an extended family of boosters, alumni of a certain age and a wider network of family/friends, not all of them Bona graduates.

Held each June, usually on or near the summer solstice (the longest day of year and, seemingly every year, also the hottest) the “Gringo” gathers guys and sometimes a few gals from all over the country. It’s a veritable feast of friends, hugging and high-fiving hello, then wolfing down an early barbecue lunch prior to a shotgun start and 18 not-too-serious but competitive holes.

Catch-up conversations migrate to the back veranda and/or inside the large, air-conditioned glass-window-enclosed banquet hall where Sean Mayer will soon be rousting attendees to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, formally kicking off a program that always includes awards, raffles and heartfelt remembrances of Rob. Laughter is abundant. But there are solemn moments, too.

Indeed, no one who was at the event in June 2011 (seven weeks after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALS) will ever forget Mayer kicking things off with three simple words: “We got him.” The room burst into applause.

“Rob would have loved all of his friends getting together every year, just that alone was enough,” Neil Peraza said. “That his legacy is tied to this turnaround of the team – that goes way beyond what we ever figured on.”

A fitting tribute, friends agree.

“Rob loved rugby,” Kelly recalls. “And he loved Bona’s.”

 

Rich Blake, a ’90 graduate who proudly spent eight semesters under the tutelage of the late Dr. Russell Jandoli, is a veteran newspaper and magazine writer specializing in financial journalism. During the mid-1990s, Blake was a crime reporter for The BVI Beacon in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. He is the author of four non-fiction books, including his most recent, “Slats: The Legend & Life of Jimmy Slattery.” He lives in The Catskills.

Portrait of a simple prayer

It remains one of history’s most resonant images of post-9/11 grieving: a Getty Images photo, taken on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, of Robert Peraza Sr., praying for his son.

Photographer Justin Lane’s happenstance shot made its way, almost instantaneously, to news websites around world. 

Peraza Sr., who passed away in 2016, told ABC News at the time, “I was just honoring Rob.”

“That was a surreal day,” Neil Peraza, Rob’s brother, recalled. He, along with his parents and his then 7-year-old daughter, Emily, had travelled to New York City for one-decade-later ceremonies that included the unveiling of a new 9/11 Memorial: enormous twin reflecting pools at the site where the towers once stood. Surrounding the pools are bronze parapets, engraved with the names of the victims. 

As the family walked along the 9/11 Memorial’s North Pool, Peraza Sr. steeled himself for the task, moments away, of reading his son’s name aloud when suddenly he happened to spot it. His son’s name. 

A man of deep faith, he took a knee and said a silent prayer. 

“My father was aware someone took his picture but he really thought nothing of it,” Neil said.

Within the hour, a snapshot for the ages went viral. It struck a chord for a world still trying to come to grips with the magnitude of the tragedy yet hopeful for the possibilities of some healing.

For the remainder of that day, Neil’s phone lit up – “so much for quiet reflection” – as friends, relatives, reporters reached out. The next several hours were spent arranging telephone interviews with media outlets the world over. The photo was compelling enough to land on the front page of the next day’s New York Post.

Later, Neil Peraza made a poster-sized version. It was displayed at the funeral service for a simple man of faith.

“When I see the picture,” he said, “it sums up Dad.”