The Gustavus Men’s Rugby team completed a tough fall schedule with a 2-3 record

The Gustavus Men’s Rugby club team finished up an abbreviated fall season this past weekend with a tough 14-7 loss to Southwest Minnesota State University out of Marshall, MN. The game was the last of five games on the schedule for the fall season. The Gusties also had games against St. Olaf, Macalester, Carleton and Minnesota State University, Mankato and finished the fall season with a 2-3 record.

At the start of the season, the Men’s Rugby team had difficulty recruiting players. Not to mention, most of the players they recruited had no previous knowledge of rugby. “We lost a ton of seniors last year so it’s like a new team. There is definitely a learning curve because [our new players] had no idea what they were doing at first. It took a little while to get our team going,” Senior Billy Sheaffer said.

Nevertheless, the team battled through not only tough opponents on the pitch but also had to deal with injuries and the H1N1 virus early in the season. “St. Olaf and Minnesota State were probably our two toughest opponents this year. St. Olaf had about three times as many guys as us, and Minnesota State was also a really solid team,” Senior Brian Barnes said.

“Three of our biggest guys were out early in the season with Swine Flu,” Senior Jason Quiram said. “Injuries have also been a problem; we had four starters out of our first game.”

Since the Men’s Rugby team is a club sport at Gustavus, it has an interesting history of organization. “[The Rugby team] is traded down through presidents and co-captains,” Senior Captain Ben Copeland said. “The old presidents and co-captains tell the new captains what to do and how to get set up, and that’s how it is transferred down from year to year.”

This puts a lot of pressure on the existing players to recruit on campus and introduce interested guys to the game of rugby. The Men’s Rugby roster hovered around 20 guys this fall, but not everyone can attend every game. With a relatively new roster, the team did have some highlights from the season. “The second half of the game against Carleton [was a highlight of the season],” Barnes said. “Since we have a lot of inexperienced guys on the team, a lot of the new guys started to finally learn the game. We started to play really well and rolled over Carleton in the second half.”

Despite somewhat of a difficult fall season with the recruiting process, the Gustie rugby players remain optimistic about the spring season.

“Our best season is in the spring because so many more guys come out. Many of the guys who play football in the fall will come out and add to our numbers,” Quiram said.

The spring season for the Gustavus Men’s Rugby team will also be significantly more extensive in terms of the number of games in the season. The Gusties will play anywhere from eight to ten games in the spring and a tournament with three or four games on one weekend.

With a fairly strong core of players returning in the spring, the Gustavus Men’s Rugby team will still rely on recruiting to add to the roster. “We would welcome anyone who is somewhat athletic and wants to stay active,” Barnes said. “Everyone will see playing time during games so we would like to get as many people to come out as we can, and we will be competitive.”