Movin’ on up

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The VCU men’s rugby team moved up to Division II this year and is moving on to new and tougher challenges.

The rugby team at VCU started up in the 1970s, and sustained for 20 years, but went defunct in 1995. In 2001, VCU rugby alumni restarted the club at Division III, and in five years it reached Division II.

The VCU men’s rugby team moved up to Division II this year and is moving on to new and tougher challenges.

The rugby team at VCU started up in the 1970s, and sustained for 20 years, but went defunct in 1995. In 2001, VCU rugby alumni restarted the club at Division III, and in five years it reached Division II.

Junior Joe Caridi (Alexandria, VA) is the match secretary and player for the rugby club.

Caridi said, “In our area, rugby only goes as low as Division III, because the sport is not very popular. However, in Massachusetts, it goes down to Division V because there are more players with wider variation in competition.”

Having finally gotten into Division II, he said, “There is a difference in challenge. You can’t tell how good a team will be by the size of their players. I’ve seen the smallest players take out the biggest guys on the field.”

“I’ve seen a lot of players who have heart, and the game takes a lot of heart to be good at it. You have to mentally prepare yourself,” Caridi said, “and if you take it seriously, you can even play in the championship down the road.”

Caridi explained that they can’t force the players to practice, and because they can’t force them to show up, their drive plays a larger role in higher-level rugby than in Division III. The players are hard-pressed to balance their classes and sports to be more successful.

“We have the numbers to succeed, and we have three excellent coaches, with over 100 years of combined experience. One of them, Steve Parker from England, has 25 years of experience in American rugby,” said Caridi.

Parker said, “I moved here to America back in 1981, I even got my citizenship here, and I’ve coached for about ten years now. I’ve played rugby since I was 11 years old. It’s a wonderful sport.”

Discussing the public view of rugby, Caridi said, “rugby in the old days had a bad connotation, because people considered us to be a bunch of drunken meatheads. People think it’s a lot more violent with more injuries than football, which isn’t true. We’re as much athletes as any of the varsity sports at VCU.”

“The image is really changing and becoming a lot more professional,” said Caridi. “There has been a movement to popularize the sport across the United States,” he said, but of the obstacles standing in the way of adding men’s rugby to the list of varsity sports, one is the issue of sex.

As varsity sports exist now, VCU covers men’s baseball, men and women’s soccer and women’s field hockey, to name a few.

There are seven male sports and seven female sports, and putting rugby on without also adding a women’s team to the palette of varsity sports would upset the balance between sexes and funding.

“There is a difference in challenge. You can’t tell how good a team will be by the size of their players. I’ve seen the smallest players take out the biggest guys on the field.”
– Joe Caridi, VCU men’s rugby match secretary

In addition to the problem of imbalance, there is the practical dilemma of marketability. If a rugby team has a sponsor, the brand name is often worn on their jerseys, since there isn’t any room for advertising. The 80-minute game doesn’t stop for anything – not even for an injury, so definitely not for a commercial break.

Additionally, as Caridi said, the game is a lot more fun to play than it is to watch, so the typical fan of rugby is usually dedicated and probably has some background or personal interest in the game – an involvement which takes more than idle attention of a traditional sports fan.

Despite the issues underscoring the popularity of rugby at VCU, Joe Caridi said, “we do have support from the school, but it’s a slippery slope. We draw from the same pool of money as the academic, social and athletic clubs.”

The Student Government Association has to make their own decisions on what not to fund so they can appropriately fund all the clubs. Additionally, the rugby team brings in $40 per semester in dues from each player.

“Each club gives SGA a budget, the SGA then asks you to talk to them about the budget, and they make their own determinations as to what is important and what’s otherwise negligible,” Caridi said.

Caridi explained the issue that arises under these circumstances, saying, “the people at the SGA don’t always understand why we need certain things. If they want to know why we spend more money on jerseys before they give us the money, it’s because we don’t wear pads under the jerseys so they have a tendency to rip more.”

Caridi said, “22 jerseys cost $1,500, and on top of that, we pay the city, field, referee, and other fees just to play.”

Last year, 60 alumni came and participated in the matches and dinner. Caridi said, “We have such amazing alumni support because before, they were where we are now. In fact, we get more alumni at the games than we have players.”

He continued, “They support us because they want to see us keep playing. They want to come back and tell their stories of playing and want to hear us keep telling stories too.”

Every spring, the rugby club team plays alumni matches, and hold a dinner, and the alumni donate money to them every spring.

Caridi intimated that it is the sheer obscurity of the rugby team that keeps the club as much a fraternal organization as an athletic organization. The team, Caridi says feels like a large family – a family he wants to keep growing.

Regarding the future of the VCU rugby team, Caridi said “considering the last five years, I’d say in another five years, we’ll make it into Division I.” He added, “Lots of good freshmen came out last fall. They really enjoy the game and sport of rugby. There will be lots of underclassmen to take over the team when the old guys leave out. I see the team getting stronger over the next couple of semesters.”

The VCU rugby team has been practicing since Aug. 21 and still welcomes newcomers as they prepare for their season to get underway. Practice held on Monday, Aug. 28 saw the largest turnout since the start of practices. The first game will be played Sept. 10 against Mount St. Mary’s.

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