NATE WOOD

Nate “Woody” Wood had a lengthy entanglement with the UNL Rugby Club from 2001-2009 serving as a hooker/tight head prop, hanger-on, forwards coach, and finally head coach for two seasons.  Like so many other ruggers of his generation, Nate was a small-town Nebraska high school wrestler and football player that dove head first (literally) into the game his first week at UNL.

During his time with the club as a player, he was selected to the Heart of America all-star team and was a member of the team that finally beat Truman State in the match played in Memorial Stadium (approx. 2004).  His favorite memory of his playing days was the Westerns tournament match at the Air Force Academy where the overmatched Huskers gave the Zoomies a run for their money, and after the narrow loss, driving on base to retrieve 3-4 of UNL players from the infirmary.

After graduation, Nate started graduate school immediately at UNL and was just “always around. “ Eventually, he stepped in to help coach forwards, then stepped in to fill the head coaching vacancy. 

He was grateful to coach a team filled with great leaders, great athletes, and some experienced foreigners.  The most surreal moment of his coaching tenure was being invited with the team to meet Springbok legend Francois Pienaar in the football offices of Memorial Stadium.  He has no recollection of how or why that happened.

Nate departed Lincoln in 2009 to continue graduate school in Pittsburgh, receiving his Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015.  He returned to Lincoln in 2016 to be the first employee of Virtual Incision, a surgical robotics startup company developing miniature robots for surgery, where he remains to this day. 

Nate lives in east Lincoln with his wife, Alissa, and children Elliot (9), Ike (8), Ian (5), and Emerson (5).