Rugby struggles to find audience at Davis High
By Avery Weinman, HUB Correspondent–
Every Monday through Thursday a group of girls ventures over to the North Davis campus to endure two hours of sweat-inducing practice for an activity not recognized as a school sport: rugby.
Before every practice the girls file into the bathroom at the Yolo County public library and take off their school clothes to swap them for practice gear. Boots become sneakers, skinny jeans become gym shorts, and the array of various blouses transform into bright blue “NorCal Youth Rugby Division” t-shirts.
The practice is made even harder for the girls who know that the sport doesn’t have a large fan base. “Many people aren’t too aware of it or [don’t] come to home games,” junior Carolyn Irving said.
At Davis High, the sport is not so widespread, but that doesn’t mean that the students that play it aren’t fiercely dedicated to what they do.
“The driving force in getting rugby in the schools is the students,” said Glenn Irvine, rugby coach at Cathedral Catholic.
One of the main problems hindering the popularity of rugby as a high school sport is lack of knowledge as to how the sport actually works.
Mark Wilson, the head coach of the men’s rugby team at the University of California, Northridge has found that many people think that rugby can be simply described as “like football but without the pads and helmet.” Wilson stated that if people knew more about the sport’s importance in American culture they’d be more interested.
“If it wasn’t for rugby, you wouldn’t have football or basketball. Both sports came from rugby,” Wilson said.
Rugby isn’t a central sport at Davis High, but at longtime rival school Jesuit the sport is highly acclaimed. Its men’s rugby team has won five national championships in the last 10 years.
At Davis High rugby is a club sport, not an official sport that is recognized by the Sac-Joaquin Section. Regardless of not being recognized by the Sac-Joaquin Section, Davis High “fields the absolute maximum number of sports that are sanctioned in the Sac-Joaquin Section,” Athletic Director Dennis Foster said. If the student body wanted to make rugby an official school sport, it would have to make an existing school sport a club sport.
Club sports like rugby continuously have a hard time of keeping a fan base. Sophomore Myles Cannings is originally from England, where the story of rugby popularity is much different.
In England, rugby is usually an identified school sport with a large following and rabid fans that are similar to England’s soccer fans.
“Soccer is a gentleman’s sport played by brutes, but rugby is a brute’s sport played by gentlemen,” Cannings said.
However, rugby may be on the rise for Davis High, and for the rest of America.
According to research conducted by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers’ Association in 2010, the number of nationwide rugby players has grown from 750 thousand to 1.3 million in more recent years.
In the past, Davis High has produced rugby players that have gone onto play for more prestigious organizations, like the collegiate team at UC Berkeley. Davis High women’s golf coach Rhonda Mohr’s stepson played rugby for Davis High during his time at the high school and later went on to play at UC Berkeley.
“The opportunity to go to Cal Berkeley and not only participate on a great team but receive an education is a great reason to be on the rugby team at Davis High,” Mohr said.
