Rugby is one of 19 club sports offered at DU. For many Americans, rugby is a foreign concept that they have likely never seen in action.
“The best way I can describe it is football that never stops,” club vice president and senior Dan Hauser explained. “There are no pads, the game only stops when the ball goes out of bounds and you cannot throw the ball forward.”
At Denver, there are teams for both men and women, but Hauser says that they try to look at the two collectively as one unified DU rugby organization.
Unlike most other club sports, collegiate club rugby is divided up into divisions on a national level just like varsity sports governed by the NCAA. Many schools offer scholarship money to students interested in playing club rugby. Though DU does not offer this opportunity, Hauser says it is a goal of the organization to start recruiting players out of high school within the next five years or so by offering scholarships similar to what is offered to NCAA Division I athletes.
Though many played other high contact sports growing up, Hauser says most players on the men’s and women’s club teams come to DU with no rugby experience due to lack of awareness of the sport in the U.S. Hauser grew up playing hockey and has found a lot of the same skills to be applicable in rugby.
“[Rugby] is in a very infantile stage of being a college sport in the US,” Hauser explained. “There are only a few official Division I teams.”
The team has a “very structured” executive board and travels all over the country to play in tournaments, many of which are against schools that do offer financial incentives to their players. Hauser says that it costs between $60,000-$80,000 per year to keep the club running between paying coaches, trainers and travel expenses.
DU is a part of the Rocky Mountain Rugby Football Union and competes against other nearby smaller schools like Regis and New Mexico Highlands. On a larger scale, DU plays schools like Claremont-McKenna, who they will compete with in the upcoming Collegiate Rugby Championship on Memorial Day weekend in New Orleans. DU will compete in a format known as sevens, which is when teams made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves. The team also plays in fifteens in some games and tournaments, which is played with 15 players on each side of the ball who compete for two forty-minute halves.
The team competes year-round, starting with games in the fall shortly after recruiting happens at the beginning of fall quarter. Playoffs wrap up right before summer.
The men’s team typically practices two nights a week on the field and in the winter, two nights a week in the varsity weight room, which Hauser says is unique in that no other club sports generally have access to the D1 amenities.
Hauser says another thing that sticks out about DU rugby to separate it from other club sports is the history and camaraderie surrounding the game at the school. There is an alumni board that connects with current students, sometimes even networking professionally and offering jobs to current players. There is a sense of community among the players that Hauser says more closely resembles that of Greek life than a club sport.
“There are guys who played forty years ago, and they want to talk and get to know about me,” Hauser said. “[The alumni] have become mentors to me, and they want to see me do well and become successful.”
The players hold each other accountable off the field. Players acting out of line are given a creative punishment chosen by the team.
“When you walk around wearing that [team] jacket, people know who you are, and they know what you stand for,” Hauser said. “It is important for them to make sure [poor decisions] cannot happen again.”
Students interested in joining club rugby at any point in the year can contact the men’s club president Vaughn Williams or email duclubwomensrugby@gmail.com.
