New season, new style
Captains in the oldest club at Utah State University opened practice with a new outlook and are looking forward to an enjoyable year.
“We just want to come out and have some fun this season,” said Utah State rugby club head coach and player Ryan McLeod.
McLeod began preparations for the season with his team Aug. 28 and the Aggies are now practicing for the upcoming sevens schedule.
“This year we are trying something we have never done before, we are planning on having two teams,” McLeod said. “One will be a sevens team and the other a full fifteens team.”
“The sevens will be the main team this fall,” said Oisin Tong, team captain.
The Aggie rugby team has existed since 1967 and is the longest running sports club at USU. According to club president Michael Hawks, until the last few years all games were played with fifteen players on the field. Playing with seven men, or “sevens,” has grown worldwide lately, a trend the club is now following.
“Sevens has been around for a while, but its really picked up around the world,” said Tong, a graduate student in mechanical engineering from Ireland. “Its now an Olympic sport.”
Tournaments for the sevens team will be this fall, starting on Sept 15. There the team will play the first of two qualifying events with the top team advancing to the Mountain 7’s Conference Tournament in Glendale, Colo., Tong said.
“To qualify for regions would be a big goal for us,” said Hawks, a junior majoring in exercise science.
Sevens is played with seven players on the field with two seven minute halves, differing from the longer traditional fifteens games. Fifteens takes more time to play.
“It takes too long to recover,” Hawks said.
“Sevens is a much quicker game, you run the field a lot,” McLeod said. “It is as high of scoring if not more high scoring in a fourth of the time.”
With sevens growing, opinions still vary on the best form of rugby. Most of the Aggie players grew up playing fifteens.
“I just like to play,” Hawks said.
Although sevens will be the focus, McLeod said there is still plenty of room to play. Throughout the qualifying tournaments for sevens, fifteens will play friendlies on adjacent fields.
“We’re always looking for new people to come out,” said McLeod, who mentioned he has seen between 42-55 students at practices this fall. “If you’re willing to come to practice twice a week, get beat up a little and listen to us, we’ll teach you how to play the game.”
Tong agreed.
“You don’t have to know how to play the game,” he said. “We’ll teach you. There are fifteens friendlies so you won’t just sit in practice, you’ll play.”
Everyone willing to pay the price at practices is welcome, he said, explaining that shoving grass up a bloody nose to slow the bleeding is just the first of many tough steps to take.
“We don’t ever cut anyone from the team,” McLeod said. “We just run them hard enough they cut themselves.”
McLeod, a senior in civil engineering, has been with the team as a player since arriving at Utah State, and has been the head coach for the past several years. Now in his fifth year with the club, he said he plans to supervise more and put himself in less as a player.
The Utah State Rugby Club holds practices every Tuesday and Thursday from 5-7pm at the west HPER fields. McLeod said he is still hoping to field better teams for fifteens and practice space is available for all who are willing. No experience is necessary to play.
– m.hop@aggiemail.usu.edu
Twitter:@legendarymhops