“Rugby is for everyone:” How Stanford’s membership crew thrives

“I feel I broke my nostril,” a participant calls out as she walks into the locker room earlier than a Monday evening apply.

“Once more?” a teammate replies with amusing. 

The room erupts in straightforward chatter, asking if she’s nonetheless coming to apply (sure, she is) and whether or not she’s going to get it checked out (sure, she’s going to). As the remainder of at the moment’s crew trickles in, the comfy room warms. Pulling mud-caked cleats out of backpacks, the crew regularly recordsdata out to heat up.

The membership

The ladies belong to Stanford Rugby, a membership sport round 80 gamers sturdy between the boys’s and girls’s groups. Regardless of the game’s relative obscurity within the U.S., Stanford’s rugby program has lengthy been residence to a tight-knit, aggressive group of athletes.

Stanford performs Rugby Union, the fashion of play favored by the U.S., whereby two groups of seven or 15 gamers kick, carry and go an rectangular ball throughout the sphere. In contrast to its cousin, American soccer, the ball can solely be handed backward, and play doesn’t cease when the ball-carrier is tackled, resulting in a bodily, fast-paced recreation. 

The membership operates on a mixture of an endowment fund, alumni donations, fundraising and pupil dues. A $1 million donation by alum Hal Steuber  ’62 AB MBA ’64 in 2003 constructed Steuber Rugby Discipline, a 130-by-70-meter grass expanse on East Campus. The donation made Stanford considered one of few American universities with a delegated year-round rugby area; but, in a sport that rosters 23 athletes every recreation, it’s nonetheless as much as the crew to fill it. 

Rugby individuals… they’re very persuasive

Unable to recruit potential college students like a varsity sport, the membership embarks on a rigorous recruitment marketing campaign every fall.

Sophomore Vanessa Onuoha ’25 has been on the crew since her freshman yr, when she noticed the membership tabling on the actions truthful. Her mother performed rugby in faculty, so she determined to test it out.

“I’ll come to 1 apply simply so I can inform my mother that I went,” Ohuoha stated. “And I used to be like, ‘Wait, that was form of enjoyable. I form of like that. Perhaps I ought to go to a different apply.’ After which one other apply was the entire season, shopping for cleats and becoming a member of the crew.”

Madison Quig ’23 additionally joined after seeing the membership tabling her freshman yr. “Rugby individuals — they’re very persuasive,” stated Quig. “You’re like, ‘Properly, I’ll simply strive it out,’ you already know? And then you definitely get hooked.”

Every customer is inspired to attend two practices earlier than deciding whether or not rugby is for them. To these unaccustomed to the fast-paced, advanced sport, a primary apply will be daunting. However the crew is used to recognizing potential.

“We attempt to do a superb job of retaining individuals who come to apply and who we’re like, ‘I really feel like we are able to see this for you,’ and be like, ‘You’re gonna get pleasure from it, like, you’re a bit scared, however you’re gonna like this,’” stated Onuoha.

The crew can be accustomed to taking over new gamers from totally different athletic backgrounds.

“Particularly on the seven-a-side recreation, the place there’s a bit bit extra space and time, when you come from that, like, monitor, soccer, basketball background, you may actually excel shortly,” stated head coach Richard Ashfield. Along with main each the boys’s and girls’s crew, Ashfield coaches for the USA Rugby Ladies’s Nationwide Staff in the summertime.

Rugby is for everyone

Much like American soccer, there’s a large spectrum of talent units and physique varieties wanted on a rugby crew.

“We’d like these six-foot, massive individuals, after which we want small, quick individuals,”  Ashfield stated. “We wish all styles and sizes, and the extra totally different experiences that may be introduced on and off the sphere, the extra helpful we’re as a crew.”

Onuoha grew up taking dance, and says that the “tradition round physique picture” in rugby is “utterly totally different.”

“I feel rugby has been actually good for my self-image and my relationship with my physique in that manner,” stated Onuoha.

The crew can be host to an “worldwide diaspora,” stated Tom Adamo ’25.

“Each single individual I do know who performs on the rugby crew both joined as a freshman or is a global pupil who grew up with it,” stated Adamo, who hails from England. “It was good for me to search out that little area of interest of worldwide college students enjoying a sport that’s not massive within the U.S.”

The teaching employees additionally brings “totally different views” from world wide, stated Moe Khalil ’23. Ashfield is from Northern Eire, and former head coach Josh Sutcliffe has performed for Australia and The Philippines.

A historical past of excellence

Regardless that lots of their gamers started the game in faculty, the groups are aggressive amongst their friends, which embrace varsity applications. The ladies’s crew received the PAC-12 Rugby Sevens Championship in November, and beat Cal on March 17 to shut out an undefeated common season.

In response to Ashfield, the ladies will proceed enjoying Fifteens this Spring, with their eye on the nationwide championship, whereas the boys will change again to the Sevens recreation, the place the smaller, quick crew has “a shot of going to nationals” as nicely.

Olympic Greatness

The Stanford program has a “lengthy historical past of excellence,” stated Ashfield.  Stanford Rugby alumni dominated the rosters of the gold-medal-winning 1920 and 1924 Olympic groups, earlier than the game was pulled from the Video games.

When rugby was reintroduced on the 2016 Olympics, this time with the seven-a-side recreation, Stanford Ladies’s Rugby alumna Victoria “Vix” Folayan ’06 was a member of the U.S. crew.

Huge Sport Blip

Within the early 1900’s, Huge Sport was changed by a rugby match after a string of deadly accidents in faculty soccer. In 1919, favor returned to soccer, and the game stepped again in because the official Huge Sport.

Astronomical wins

Males’s Rugby remained a varsity sport till the 70’s, when this system was transformed to a membership sport. In 1977, the ladies’s crew emerged alongside it.

Amongst this very first girls’s rugby crew in 1976 was Sally Journey ’73, MS ’75, PhD ’78, the primary American girl in house. In truth, as many gamers will excitedly inform you, the crew has produced two astronauts: Journey and Jessica Watkins ’10, who returned from a 170-day mission on the Worldwide House Station in October of 2022.

Sure, it’s a contact sport

Whereas the occasional concussion, sprain, break and tear is par for the course for any athlete, rugby gamers can be fast to inform you the relative security of rugby in comparison with soccer.

“A lot much less persons are getting tackled per play,” stated Sephora Rupert, a first-year Ph.D. candidate. In rugby, solely the athlete carrying the ball will be tackled.

“Sure, it’s a contact sport,” Ashfield stated. “We’re very cautious.”

The crew retains an athletic coach on-site for video games and speak to practices, and gamers observe strict restoration pointers.

Greater than a sport

Even when they will’t compete on the sphere, injured college students have a house at Stanford Rugby. A $1 million donation by John Doyle ’56 MS ’59 in 2003 constructed the John Doyle Rugby Clubhouse, a two-story constructing hovering above the sphere and its modest, concrete stands. The clubhouse has the lived-in really feel of a preferred pupil hangout, with a sofa, a TV and a long time of trophies lining the partitions.

“This can be a house that we would like them to make use of and really feel like they will come when they should get away from the primary campus,” Ashfield stated. “There’s all the time an open-door coverage.”

Regardless of the space from major campus, the clubhouse is repeatedly host to finding out, socializing and the occasional crew sleepover.

The tradition

Opposite to what some may count on, Stanford’s program is comfortable to be a membership crew.

“We’ve created quite a lot of nice rugby gamers, and most of them, you’ll hear coaches say, began enjoying rugby at Stanford,” Quig stated. “That’s one thing that I don’t suppose would occur if it was a varsity sport.”

The crew dedicates apply time to educating the fundamentals of the game to newcomers, whereas a welcoming environment and a versatile, three-practice-per-week schedule permits a various group to stay round.

“We don’t have that expectation that you simply should be at the whole lot on a regular basis. It’s simply not practical at Stanford; we all know that,” Ashfield stated. “We now have some gamers that may solely come as soon as per week, and we’re like, ‘That’s fantastic.’”

“Right here, it’s like, we’re full individuals and everybody acknowledges that,” stated Elly McKay ’25, who joined membership rugby after leaving the varsity rowing crew. Whereas the monetary sources of varsity are a pleasant perk, she thinks that the membership sport’s flexibility strengthens the crew’s angle.

“Everyone seems to be all the time making a acutely aware effort to purchase into the crew every single day that they arrive, as a result of there’s all the time an possibility to not,” McKay stated.

Follow is stuffed with smiles, encouragement and playful teasing amongst teammates. Over a two-hour apply, college students are led by way of a handful of workout routines, together with a warmup of sharks and minnows, sprints and some offensive and defensive drills.

At present, the women and men apply collectively, separating solely as soon as to run totally different drills. Ashfield refers to Stanford Rugby as “one membership with two groups,” and their practices typically overlap.

“The boys be taught from the ladies, the ladies be taught from the boys,” Oliver Sibal ’24 stated. On the current girls’s recreation in opposition to Cal, the boys’s crew remodeled right into a energetic cheering part, storming the sphere to carry out an impromptu recreation of contact.

“There may be all the time quite a lot of laughter,” stated Tom Pulliam J.D. ’69, who repeatedly attends practices to provide tricks to the gamers. Pulliam, who performed on the crew throughout his time at Stanford Legislation College, attributes the crew’s constant good angle to the teaching employees, who preserve the game enjoyable.

What retains him coming again after greater than fifty years? “The sport and the individuals. It’s easy.”