Men’s club rugby finds community that transcends the field

Americans love sports. They are so ingrained into the country’s culture that many people start playing from a very young age. Typically, people think of football, basketball or soccer, but one of the fastest growing sports in the U.S. today is rugby. 

The Northeastern men’s Club Rugby team is one of the most successful teams on campus, playing in the competitive Division 1A and going undefeated this past season. 

“It is really interesting that we go out and compete against other teams that have that varsity-level status,” said David de Luzuriaga, a fifth-year economics major and co-captain of the team. “Even though we are just a club at the end of the day, we do have a good group of lads that are professionally committed to the sport. I think it puts us out from other clubs at Northeastern.” 

Rugby is not an NCAA sport and NU does not have a varsity team, but the rugby club still plays at the national level against several varsity teams from around the country. 

“Rugby’s interesting in the U.S. because it’s not NCAA. So we’re competing against, not directly in the Liberty Conference, but our same division also includes varsity rugby programs at BYU, Cal, those types of teams,” said Jack Hale, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student and vice president of the club.  

Having won the local Liberty Conference, the rugby team is currently on an upward trend. They have established themselves as a top 25 rugby fifteens team in the U.S. and top 10 rugby sevens team. 

Over the past couple of years, the team switched coaching staffs, which has helped bring them to where they are now. 

“It’s been a pretty big jump the last three or four years. One of our assistant coaches was a former player and he was here the last time we played nationals,” Hale said. ”He played a little bit for the USA national sevens team, and he’s been a pretty big help at helping our sevens team.” 

Their record has improved from 4-5 just a couple of years ago, to now being undefeated in the league, which the leaders credit to a methodical rebuild of the team.

“The past five years we really focused on building our team, building it from the ground up, making sure we have that foundation so that it doesn’t drop off again,” said fifth-year mechanical engineering student Darren Chan, another co-captain. 

Since NU cut its football team in 2008, it allowed the football players to transition to rugby. This brought over athletes and also created a link between the similar sports.

The NFL’s Seattle Seahawks are known for including rugby strategies in their game play and one of the coaches of the Northeastern team is a former football recruit. This presents an opportunity for people at NU to support the rugby team instead of football. 

“On a social side, Northeastern doesn’t really have a football team, so I think it would be a great opportunity for rugby to fill that void of watching a field sport and getting some fans out,” Hale said. 

Why choose rugby?

Rugby is a sport with several variations, with the most popular ones being sevens and fifteens. 

“Even within the world of rugby, there’s just so many subcategories that you just don’t get with other sports,” Chan said. “Baseball is baseball, soccer is soccer and football has maybe flag football. With rugby there are fifteens, sevens, tens, rugby league, rugby unions, thirteens.” 

Fifteens, the classic form of rugby, is an eighty minute game of fifteen against fifteen. Sevens is a tournament-style game of seven on seven in fourteen minute periods. The Northeastern team plays fifteens in the fall and sevens in the spring and currently has about 60 members on the team. 

“Fifteens is the classic style of rugby and what people normally do; it’s very structured and there’s a very certain way of playing that is kind of beautiful,” Chan said. “Then you have sevens which is so freeform and there is so much flexibility to it and you get a lot of different kinds of players and different ways of playing.” 

Rugby originated in England and went on to grow throughout most of Europe and Asia. It only recently became popular in the US., so most U.S. high schools and lower-level schools do not have rugby programs.

American football is so ingrained into American society that most schools will have a football program, but not rugby. Since rugby tends to combine the skills of most other sports, it allows anyone to join. 

“The fact that it’s a game that on a kind of a broad scale you use foot skills, you use hand skills, you use endurance, you use tackling and you use sprinting. It’s as tactical as it is fierce,” said Lowell Haska, a fourth-year economics and finance combined major and a co-captain of the team. 

Rugby tends to welcome all body types, with no stereotypes or prerequisites such as height for basketball or speed for soccer. With the wide range of applicable skills, people’s strengths can be pushed to the forefront, and put on display.

“There’s no specific size or skill set you need to start, like it’s really accommodating to everyone; fast, slow, large, small. You can find a position for yourself as long as you work at it,” said Tony Salvatore, a fourth-year chemical engineering student and president of the club. 

Because rugby was created in an international setting, it brings people from all over the world together. It allows people to create an international rugby community and connect with people from around the world.

Similar to soccer’s status as an international sport, rugby is on its way to becoming a worldwide sport that is like no other. Rugby sevens was recently added to the Olympics and a U.S.-based new rugby league, the MLR, or Major League Rugby, was created a mere three years ago. 

“One reason why I love rugby is because it brings such a diverse group of people together. I think it is one of the most diverse sports in the world,” de Luzuriaga said. “Rugby attracts people from all over whether it be the US, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, even places like Singapore.” 

The International Community 

Rugby’s reach expands everywhere. Members of NU club rugby have gone all over the world and found a rugby community that has allowed them to use training facilities, connect with coaches and find job opportunities.

Northeastern has a large population of international students, which in turn, brings a larger number of students who are familiar with rugby. They bring their knowledge of the sport to the school, and this has helped to expand its reach. 

Players are coming to Northeastern, recognizing the academic prestige of the school, but also the prestige of the rugby program.

“It’s cool that we have players just randomly knowing each other playing against each other in Asia, let alone the States and the UK. We have a lot of kids that have played against each other,” Chan said. 

The team is transitioning from being all international students who have previous experience in rugby to mostly domestic players who now know about rugby. They join the team for an experience different from football or soccer, and meet people from around the world in the process. 

The Brotherhood 

Since rugby combines the physicality of football with the footwork and explosiveness of soccer, it allows most players to let off some steam at the end of a tough day. 

“My closest mates are everyone from rugby,” de Luruziaga said.“Going to training if you’ve had a bad day at work or a bad day at school or if something is not going right that day, you can show up to training and the energy level is through the roof and it’s always something to look forward to.”

With 60 guys on the team, practices every day and games every weekend, teammates spend a lot of time together. As a part of the club, they participate in community service opportunities, such as blood drives or Relay for Life. 

Outside of the pitch, players have team dinners, get together to watch their gameplay and some live together in a “rugby house.” 

“Rugby is just one of those things where there is no other sport where you can go on the field, hit each on the field, and then after the game, share a meal with the other team,” Chan said. “It’s just kind of that camaraderie where you fight on the pitch but you are boys afterwards.” 

Whether a first-year or fifth-year, each member of the team is included, getting practice and playing time. The team makes sure to include extra games so that everyone has a chance to get on the pitch and they also have developmental coaches dedicated to helping new players learn the game. 

The attitude of the players stems from the mentality that was given to them by the coaches, and it has helped to create a supportive atmosphere that transcends the field. de Luzriaga said his last couple of semesters on the team were the closest he has ever seen the team.

“Our coaching staff has definitely stepped up and they have reassessed the way they’ve been coaching,” de Luzriaga said. “I think bringing that professionalism to training has created that even tighter bond where we know we’re going to be running our rear ends off at training, we know we’re going to be having that level of intensity that we need to be to compete at the national level and when you’re working that hard on the pitch, it makes you joke around even more off the pitch.”

The men’s rugby team has worked hard to maintain the upward trajectory they are on, finding family and community throughout. It allows them to grow as individuals, but also as a team. 

“We have this underdog attitude that kind of gets fed by the fact that we’re not a big college name in any sport. And we’re still not a big name in rugby, even though we’ve been dominant in our area for like three years now,” Haska said. “And we kind of want to maintain that like scrappy, uphill battle attitude and just keep growing and staying strong because it’s really the only way we can guarantee that we don’t decline.” 

On the field, players depend on each other, with the club only as strong as its weakest link. With a common goal and a common mindset, the team bonds easily and finds connections spanning the entirety of the rugby community. 

“We’re one team. We play as a team, we lose and win as a team and just kind of the camaraderie that we build here that keeps the young guys around also is great for the older guys as well,” Chan said.