Both men and women’s rugby have had impressive starts to the season. At their first scrimmage on Sunday, Sept. 15, the men’s team beat Hartford 45 to 24. In a close scrimmage against Yale, the women’s team lost by just one try, with a score of 10-5.
“The playing experience was a great start for our rookies and tremendous practice for our official season,” said women’s co-captain Tandy Bryant ’14.
Full-back Dana Sorkin ’16 said that the team “definitely held [their] own” during the game. “It put us in a good spot to see what we need to work on as the season progresses,” said Sorkin.
When asked about the game, women’s co-captain Karina Hernandez ’14 mentioned a play between herself and Sorkin: “We both saw an opportunity and went for it, and she easily made that try.” Hernandez called Sorkin “really, really fast” and “good at communicating.”
Men’s team co-captain Jack Hile ’14 anticipates a strong season. “The season looks really good; we only lost two seniors,” said Hile. “So this year we were really looking forward to it, we have an experienced team. We fully intend on going to the playoffs, which we haven’t done since I was a freshman.”
Ben Halvorsen ’16 has similar aspirations: “We’ve got all of our seniors back. We are going to make the playoffs,” said Halvorson. Of the returning seniors is co-captain and fullback Tom Olsen ’14.
The women’s team is also looking towards playoffs. In the meantime, Sorkin said she hopes to work on their organized plays and ball movement. “We made good progress after our first scrimmage and I’m excited to see what we can come up with,” said Sorkin.
Both the men’s and women’s teams play in the New England Rugby Football Union, commonly known as NERFU. They have recently become part of the NERFU Division III.
Conn rugby, which started in 2004, is entering its ninth season. Since Hile’s first year playing rugby for Conn in 2010, he said the team “has been growing and growing, and becoming more and more popular.”
Alumnus James Jackson ’11 coaches both the men’s and women’s teams. Coach Jackson also commonly goes by his stage name, DJ-eazy, and is a familiar face at Cro dances and the local New London bar scene.
Chris May ’14 describes Jackson as “a great coach” and “very relatable.” According to May, “He explains things really well, like the techniques and tactics that would be foreign to new players. He breaks it down to a very simple level. He gives us some intensity and we run with it.”
Hernandez describes Jackson as a great coach with a knack for teaching technique and drills. According to Hernandez, “He doesn’t treat us differently [from the men’s team], which is good because men’s and women’s rugby is played the same way.” Hernandez also stated that, since Jackson used to play rugby at Conn, “He understands us more and understands what our demands are in terms of players and the skill level we’re coming into the game with.”
When asked about the team’s strengths, Sorkin said, “I think our strengths include the commitment of the players and the ability of our new players to really get involved and learn the game quickly. Rugby is so unlike any other sport in its strategies and rules, so it can be overwhelming at first, but a lot of people stick with it and give it a shot.”
Rugby practices are demanding. The men’s team starts every day with extensive conditioning, sometimes in the form of hill sprints. The reasoning behind this, according to Hile, is that “starting off practice tired simulates being tired in a game.”
“Rugby is exhausting,” said Hile. “You are running or preparing for the next play the whole time. You never have a break. It is a lot different from football in that sense.”
Though Rugby is a club sport, May thinks it feels like more than that. “When you have a team that takes [the game] as seriously as we do, where people are just fighting through injuries, lifting on off days, going 100 percent all the time, it doesn’t feel like it’s a club sport.”
Hernandez had many positive things to say about the women’s team dynamics: “I think we have one of the most friendly teams on campus; we’re really inclusive. I think it’s just because we’re all learning all the time together. A lot of people who do rugby are people who are strong-willed, they want to build themselves to be stronger.” Many members of the team are involved around campus, and Hernandez says it’s interesting to see how the team comes together during a game.
Rugby practices are held Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and games are typically held on weekends. Women’s rugby looks forward to their first game against Wesleyan next weekend.•
Additional reporting by
Luca Powell, Sports Editor
