Rugby: Emerging Opportunity for GRC to National Level
By: Efrain Pardo
Sports Editor
Rugby Union, commonly known just as Rugby “is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen while Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians,” said by the famous writer Oscar Wilde.
It became more popular in the U.S.A. during the last 15 years than it was in the last four decades even with it being played here since the 19th century on both coasts. When Rugby was at its prime in our country, the American Olympic Team was Champions in 1920 and 1924 with players from teams mostly from all over the State of California.
The Rugby World Cup is the fourth most popular televised event in the world after the FIFA Men’s World Cup, the Olympics, and the Superbowl. In some areas like New Zealand All Blacks and South Africa Springboks, this sport became popular from national pride rituals and historical events. Just like the All Blacks, thanks to the ‘Haka’ done on every game has made their country popular worldwide with the Maori ritual and the Springboks united their nation after they won the 1995 Rugby World Cup when Nelson Mandela was president of the host nation. The end of apartheid was of such world relevance that the South Africans’ victory during that world championship had Hollywood produce a movie called ‘Invictus’.
Since then, this sport has continued to grow in our country. Both the men and women categories of the US National Rugby Teams have taken part in international tournaments like the last four XVs Rugby World Cups and participated in the Sevens Rugby World Tour competitions, including the two most recent Olympics and the Pan-American Games. The USA, according to the International Rugby Board rankings, is always one of the top two, for women’s, or three, for men’s best-ranked teams in the Americas. This is just above or below teams like Canada or Argentina respectively.
An example of how much the sport has grown in our nation has been the start of a professional level Major League of Rugby (MLR) in 2018. Especially, in the State of Washington Rugby has become very popular with the Seattle Seawolves professional team who has been national champions back to back during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 tournaments. Last season, our Seawolves even won the tournament final as the visiting team in the last 20 seconds of the Game 23-26 against the San Diego Legion after they were losing 23-19.
Today, Green River College (GRC) has a emerging opportunity to start a seven aside or a 15 aside women’s and men’s college-level varsity program and play in NCAA division tournaments against universities like the University of Washington (UW), Washington State (WSU), Central Washington University(CWU), Western Washington University (WWU), and Notre Dame College (NDC) just to name a few. These universities still have a level that can be easily reached by our school and GRC has the capacity to recruit a pool well-trained male players who were not able to continue playing football after high school as well as athletically driven female players who wish to practice a contact sport. Rugby is one of the few sports that find every single member of the team useful, from every shape and size of body that plays sports.
As the rugby college programs from smaller schools have proven in the past years, they do not require more infrastructure than a baseball or a soccer program including a trainer, uniforms, the pitch, and the sports gear. In fact, many of the non-football schools in our state like CWU which have benefited from the NCAA incentives and have put their school in the spotlight thanks to this sport.
Many smaller schools than ours have achieved the goal so far and Green River College can take advantage of Rugby to introduce a new sport on our campus and participate in an NCAA tournament, encourage diversity and opening the door to an opportunity which can be a new era in the history of sports of our Gators.
Photo Cred: University of Calgary | Facebook
