When No. 8 Simba Chirara went down injured before this past weekend’s game between Western Michigan and Bowling Green, WMU Head Coach Mark Allen was sorely tempted to shift his captain and flyhalf Tom Kacor to replace Chirara.

Kacor, a big, strong athlete who has played No. 8 plenty of times before, so the move would have made sense, but instead Allen made a different move, and left Kacor at flyhalf. The non-move paid off, as Kacor took control of the game, scored two tries, and helped Western Michigan pull off a 33-29 upset.

Kacor, said Allen, is an impressive athlete who has captained WMU these past two seasons, and will be back for his 5th year and, likely, to captain the team again. Allen moved him from No. 8 to flyhalf as a recognition of his rugby intelligence.

“He’s a very smart player, reads the field so well, and is vocal,” Allen said of the Business major. “He played 7s for the Chicago Lions over the summer and that helped him a lot in terms of his knowledge of the game. The thing about moving him to flyhalf is that asking him to be a distributor takes the ball away from him. But he’s such a team guy, he had no problem with it; he wanted to do it.”

No one knows if Western Michigan will build from this win over Bowling Green to get to bigger things, but this week was a big thing, and one player who had a lot to do with it was WMU flyhalf Tom Kacor.

Western Michigan University flyhalf and captain Tom Kacor is our Aircraft Charter Solutions Player of the Week.