Dan Mauer '06 was inches away from scoring the first try of his Brandeis rugby career.Then he hit the ground, and everything went black for a few seconds. When he came to, his teammates were celebrating the try he had almost scored, which had been picked up by Dan Tress '07 for the first score of the game.

Mauer felt slightly dizzy, but after a few words with coach John Daulton he re-entered the game, and played about 70 minutes of what he and his teammates called the best rugby of his life.

Then he was strapped to a body board and taken to Newton-Wellesley hospital in an ambulance.

A 21-year-old triple-major from Silver Springs, Md., Mauer had suffered a fractured skull and a concussion, and needed to be hospitalized. He had played almost the entire game with the fractured skull.

"I felt a little shaken up, but I didn't feel too bad," Mauer said of the time immediately after the injury. "You get shaken up during rugby games. So I kept playing. It seemed on the surface like everything was okay."

His teammates were just as oblivious to the head trauma.

"He didn't say anything to me about it, so I just assumed he was OK," captain Alex Goldstein '06 said. "But then after the game ... I knew something was going on because Dan Mauer doesn't request medical attention unless he really needs it."

An ambulance transported Mauer to Newton-Wellesley hospital, where he had chest and neck X-rays and a CAT scan. He was diagnosed with a fractured skull and a concussion, but because there were no neurologists on call at Newton Wellesley, he was transported to Brigham Women's Hospital late Saturday evening for further evaluation .

After monitoring him overnight, doctors were convinced that Mauer's condition had not worsened and there was no cranial bleeding, and he was discharged Sunday afternoon.

"Given that I knew I had had a skull fracture, all the rest of the news was pretty positive," Mauer said.

Teammates expressed awe with Mauer's ability to play after the injury, especially after how well he played.

"He played great rugby," Goldstein said. "You wouldn't expect someone with a skull fracture to be tackling 300-pound guys running with the ball."

Mauer said that the excitement of playing at home and in the team's first game in New England Rugby Football Union Division III-after ascending from Division IV during the offseason-masked the pain.

"It was partially adrenaline," Mauer said. "It was the partly the fact that it is such a physical sport. You do shrug away some pain."

Although Mauer's rugby career is over, Goldstein said Mauer's contribution to the team will continue to be invaluable.

"The team will step up and we'll fill the holes, but everyone's going to miss having him in the lineup," Goldstein said. "I know that [Mauer] enjoys this team way too much to not be constantly around it still. He may be injured, but he'll be there all the time."

Mauer was lifted off the field to a rousing set of jeers and barbs courtesy of his teammates, but his unflappably optimistic attitude suggests that those jokes helped get him through his hospitalization.

"This is the way rugby players show compassion-they joke around with their teammates even in the toughest times," Goldstein said. "It's hard, but you still have to laugh because you know that when you play rugby that's what you're risking. It's not the most friendly sport in the world."

The joking continued all the way to the hospital, where Mauer said that one nurse couldn't take his temperature because he "couldn't stop laughing."

Since returning to campus Sunday afternoon, Mauer has been resting and popping Advil by the bunch.

"I have a headache," he said.