Appleton Post-Crescent – Bob Marcks is a football guy and the first to admit that he’s no rugby expert.
But it will be tough to find a bigger fan of the United States rugby team when it opens play Tuesday morning at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Marcks’ grandson, Garrett Bender, is a member of the 12-member Team USA men’s squad that will compete in sevens competition. Bender and Team USA will play Argentina in its opener at 11 a.m. The match is scheduled to be broadcast live on NBCSN.
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Bender, 25, is pretty good at rugby, too. The 6-foot-4, 225-pound Bender began playing the game his sophomore year at Washburn High School in Minneapolis where he was a standout football player as a tight end, linebacker and long snapper, earning all-conference and all-metro honors. He led the Washburn rugby team to the Minnesota state championship his senior season and was recruited to play football at St. Cloud State. But Bender eventually turned his attention to rugby and signed a contract in 2012 to play on the U.S. national team.
Bender was part of the U.S. team that qualified for Rio by placing third at the Pan Am Games in 2015. This is the first year that rugby has been part of the Summer Olympics since 1924, when the U.S. team won the gold in Paris.
Read more: http://www.postcrescent.com/story/sports/2016/08/07/new-london-man-proud-grandson-olympics/88374618/
