One of my all-time favorite events to cover is the Elvis 7s, the annual rugby tournament honoring Elvis presented by the Memphis Blues Rugby Club. I’ve covered it for decades. It’s such a uniquely Memphis thing.
Games are played against the soundtrack of Elvis recordings, including, appropriately, All Shook Up and Suspicious Minds, the latter with its words “Caught in a trap.” (Or, more fittingly for the occasion, a “maul,” which means being physically detained by the opposing team). An Elvis trivia game is played and, there’s a “Mister Sideburns” contest, in which players with various sizes and shapes of sideburns compete against one another as they sing a snippet from an Elvis song. The winner is usually given some kind of an Elvis memento.
Elvis 7s, which celebrated its 35th anniversary this year, was held August 6th (the event is traditionally held the first Saturday of August). The tournament, which for some years was held at USA Stadium in Millington, was back at its old stomping (literally) ground at McBride Field in Toby Park.
In years past, the late Bill “Dollar Bill” Walker dressed as Elvis and his wife, now Sophie Duffel, dressed as Priscilla Presley. They were driven onto the field in a pink Cadillac. There also were Priscilla contests with competing women rugby team members in beehive hairdos.
The T-shirts are always great. This year’s shirt featured a drawing of Elvis in a rugby uniform with long socks. Troy McCall, a Memphis Blues Club alumnus came up with the image, which he’d used on previous T-shirts. McCall, a former Elvis 7s tournament director, has designed the Elvis 7s T-shirts for “at least 20 years,” he says.
Wally Dyke, who founded the event, wore one of McCall’s 2011 Elvis 7s T-shirts, which featured an image of Elvis’s face with a Maori tattoo. “That year the Elvis 7s T-shirts were based on the fact that Rugby World Cup was being hosted in New Zealand,” McCall says. “Maoris are indigenous to New Zealand and are part of the culture.”
McCall attended the World Cup that year, and was wearing the shirt at a bar in New Zealand. McCall saw a Maori man with a tattooed face on the other side “staring daggers at us,” he says. He wondered if the man was disturbed by the shirt. McCall walked over and said, “Hey, man. We’re from the states and we’re here for the Rugby World Cup. I wanted to know, do you find this offensive?”
“He said, ‘Nah. That’s one of the best shirts I’ve ever seen. I’d love to have one.’ I literally took off the shirt I was wearing and gave it to him. And he gave me the shirt he was wearing.”
Another tidbit about that shirt: “If you look at the bottom left part of his face, the left cheek and jaw, it actually says ‘Elvis’ within the design.”
The first Elvis 7s event was in 1987. “It had four teams and he (Dyke) brought his stereo from home and hung his speakers from a tree,” McCall says.
“A cassette player,” Dyke says.
And, he added, “After that first year I think we had 12 teams. Then we got to our maximum of 16, the most we can do in a day.”
Tournament director Rob Reetz says 16 teams from the Mid-South (Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama) took part in this year’s Elvis 7’s.
“It went great,” Reetz says.”We had absolutely no issues at all.”
And no rain. I actually covered the event one year when it poured. I stood in muddy water in a tent with a bunch of soggy players while rain pelted the roof. I can’t recall if Kentucky Rain was playing.
“I’ve actually never been to an Elvis (7s) where it rained,” Reetz says.
Knock on wood.
Or, as the King says, “If you can’t find a partner use a wooden chair.”
