Frank Graziano sat at the dinner table with rabbit on his plate, but there was only one problem — he is a vegetarian.

For the Eastern rugby coach, the decision was easy. It wasn’t just any other dinner. He was in the home of Madsion Overbey, who he was recruiting to play rugby at Eastern.

“I didn’t want to insult them, so I wound up eating the rabbit,” Graziano said. “It was fine. I hadn’t had chicken in about 8-to-10 years. If I cheat, it is like once a year or once every two years and this was once a year cheating. It was delicious food.”

Graziano added that he only ate one little piece of the rabbit.

During the dinner, they had corn that was picked right from their corn stalk. The potatoes were freshly grown and they had blueberry pie, which had had blueberries picked from their blueberry tree.

“Everything was homemade and we had a great time,” he said. “It was absolutely delicious food. I was there for about four or five hours.”

This was all happening in the town of Cissna Park, Ill., which is about 45 minutes north of Champaign in Iroquois County.

The town of about 830 people and has about .7 square miles of land area.

Overbey said growing up in such a small community has more pros than cons.

“Everyone knows who you are, you know who everyone is,” she said. “It is such a loving community since you know everybody. You get so much support in everything you do. The community loves the sports.”

While at Cissna Park High School, Overbey was a three-sport athlete and played volleyball, basketball and softball.

Her high school enrollment, according to the school’s website, was about 119 people.

During one of her basketball games at St. Joseph-Ogden High School in St. Joseph, Ill., Eastern rugby coach Frank Graziano was attending the game to recruit someone else from St. Joseph-Ogden.

While recruiting that player, Graziano ended up sending a recruiting packet to Overbey  because of the abilities that she had when seeing her on the basketball court.

“I was very impressed initially with her athletic ability, her toughness and her ability to hustle up and down the floor,” he said. “All of those things are the things I need on the rugby field and those are the uncoachable type things.”

With Overbey not getting the rugby packet until about a month later, when she got it, she said she had to leave her classroom to call her parents to let them know the news.

“I was already accepted to Eastern and I wanted to go to Eastern,” she said. “I’ve walked passed the rugby field, not even knowing what it was and saying ‘Oh! I would wanna play that’. So, when I got it, my heart was in my stomach, and I couldn’t believe that somebody wanted me to come play rugby. It was definitely crazy.”

Overbey wanted to already come to Eastern to major in Special Education, because of the terrific program that Eastern offers and she does have a cousin that has a disability

“I was going to do occupational therapy, until last year when I took an aid class in our school, with the special ed kids,” she said. “Within the first week, that is what I knew what I was supposed to do.”

Now that Overbey is at Eastern, she has been playing rugby for about seven weeks and Graziano said every day she is taking a step forward everyday.

“Sometimes it’s a big step,” he said. “She got a chance to run the ball in the game this Saturday and ran about 25 yards. That is first time she had a long run. She already scored once for us. She is picking it up very quickly.”

Overbey’s first try of her career came in the game at Lindenwood on Sept. 16.

Overbey said the biggest influence on her sports career has been her dad.

“He played sports throughout his whole life,” she said. “He is always expecting me to be better than I have been and he is always there no matter what. If I am playing tic-tac-toe he wants me to win.”

Bob Reynolds can  be reached at 581-2812 or rjreynolds @eiu.edu.