Club Rugby: From the muddy Cathedral lawn to nationals

Before grass becomes a lush, green patch of land, it’s mud or dirt. Nothing has grown from it yet. The product must be cultivated over time.

The patch of earth where the Panther Rugby Football Club trains, located on the southwest corner of the Cathedral Lawn, embodies the squad itself, in many ways.

In a field situated between an inconveniently placed sidewalk, a big tree and some bushes that separate the space from the bordering Bellefield and Forbes avenues, the men’s club rugby team at Pitt practices three times a week during the fall and spring months. It makes for an odd scene as the players run through three-on-two situations and complex-looking passing drills, darting and weaving in all directions in short, calculated movements while people meander on, mostly unaware of the purpose of the activity.

But neither the lack of adequate facilities nor new players’ lack of familiarity with the sport has kept the team from achieving success. It qualified for its first national tournament since 2004, and won its league, by beating St. Joseph’s University, 35-26, last weekend.

Pitt boasts a winning streak going back to this time last year. The team hasn’t had a losing season in more than a decade and has won seven of its last 11 conference championships before moving to a new, more competitive league — the Keystone Conference — this season.

Next up for the team is its nationals match here in Pittsburgh at Founders Field on April 27 against Dartmouth at 1 p.m..

The majority of its members had never played the sport — a pastime with English origins that resembles American football in its scoring system with two endzones and a pair of uprights, but bans forward passes and pads and keeps play continuous — before coming to college. Seven of the 15 starters this season played rugby before they came to Pitt.

In 2004, only two had played previously.

Whatever Pitt players do to accelerate their progress along the learning curve works.

“The people who become starters are starters because they pick it up quick and they’re already coming into college athletic,” said senior Evan Weinstein, a starter for the team’s A-side before breaking his collarbone. “They’ve already played sports throughout high school, even if it wasn’t rugby.”

A key to members gaining the necessary familiarity with the sport is the B-side, a reserve team that’s commonplace in collegiate rugby and provides depth for the A-side while serving as a developmental tool for all of those who need to learn the game.

The B-side plays a full schedule against the same caliber schools as the A-side, and many of its members play on the A-side, too, making the distinction between the two teams fluid.

An experience-laden squad has guided the team through the transition with 13 players graduating this semester.

One of those veteran players is captain Chris Halesey.

“We basically came in as the underdog and not a lot of people in conference or other teams really expected much of us coming up from D-II,” the senior said. “We just surprised everybody because we knew what we were capable of.”

The fact that a team with a starting lineup consisting of people who have the most playing experience has had so much success is no coincidence, according to junior starter Hans Kessler, the club’s vice president, to whom there’s no substitute for actual gameplay.

“You actually have to play, first of all, to start to learn where you need to be and what to do in a game. It takes about two to three games where you don’t feel like you’re a complete idiot out there,” Kessler said. “It takes some time, and then you start to realize generally what you do.”

Despite the time he has spent competing over the past three years, Kessler admits he doesn’t have total mastery of the rules and the game’s nuances — which is to be expected with a sport such as this.

“With B-side just being an opportunity for everyone to play, that makes [those] games extremely valuable because it allows our new players to get some experience without having the A-side on the line,” he said.

Halesey said the sport is hard to pick up and truly learn just by attending practice, especially when you consider how the size of the practice space doesn’t allow for a full, real scrimmage. Going full-speed forces people to have to make the same split-second decisions they would against an opponent.

“It’s tough to learn in practice,” he said. “You have to actually go out and play the games. The best way to learn is just to play it.”

To head coach Dan Talbert, astute, athletic people are assets because quick reflexes are a requirement for success in the sport.

“The faster you make decisions in rugby, the better off you are,” said Talbert, a volunteer who’s been coaching the team since 1999 and played at Pitt from 1991 to 1995.

This idiom especially holds true given the increased talent level of Pitt’s opposition this year after moving up from Division II to I-AA, and as a member of the more talented Keystone Conference.

“The pace of the game is the main thing that changed from D-II to D-I. You can tell everything just got a little faster,” Weinstein said. “You didn’t really have as many beginner players. Everyone kind of already knew what was going on.”

“Most of them don’t have any rugby instincts. More than half of them never saw a rugby ball before they got on campus,” he added. “That’s all we try to do is build these instincts, build the knowledge, and then it’s up to them to put it together on the field.”

Talbert, like many of the people he now teaches, didn’t know anything about the sport before he joined the team in the fall of his freshman year. The false perception that a lack of familiarity with the sport means people should try to stick with the sport is one of the greatest misconceptions he and the players have to combat on a regular basis.

“You don’t have to know anything to come out for the team. We will teach you, and you will learn how to play,” he said. “We lose a lot of people cause they’re like, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about it.’ Well, yeah, neither did I.”

Many newcomers aren’t prepared for the inherent struggles that come with learning to play such a physical and demanding sport.

“A lot of people who were really good in high school see rugby, they try it and they’re not really good right away, and again, that’s the learning curve. It takes about 10 games to be good to be able to be like ‘OK, I’m making all the right decisions.’”

Matt Dunleavy, the sole freshman starter for the A-side, began playing in eighth grade and continued through high school with a rugby club alongside current teammate junior Jimmy “Sprinkles” Lennox, the team’s kicker.

That prior experience has given him an advantage over his peers and helped him secure a starting spot this semester, his first with the team.

“It helps a ton. I wouldn’t be in the position that I am right now if it wasn’t for that,” Dunleavy said. “Just coming in with that experience when a lot of players are brand new to it just gives you a head start and helps you pick up the game a lot easier.”

It took him about two years after starting to play to get to the point where the mental part of the game became less of a burden and more of a strength.

“You start to get to where you don’t have to think about it and it just kind of comes to you,” he said. “It’s all ingrained in your mind, basically, and just becomes a reaction.”

Weinstein doesn’t think his schooling in the sport is close to over.

“I’m definitely still learning, every game I play,” he said.

The high number of players on the field makes knowledge of the game imperative for group chemistry purposes.

“You have the 15 positions, and each position has its own role. But in order to figure what really that role is, you kind of have to know where you fit in among all the other positions,” Weinstein said. “You can be really good at your position, but if you don’t have at least a basic understanding of what the other positions do, then you’re not really going to be very helpful as a team player in rugby.”

Twice more this week and a few more times next week, the members of Panther Rugby Football Club will trudge out to that all-too-familiar space and continue to develop before April 27.

“It’s very, very rewarding to see them put it together. When you see that light go off in somebody’s head and watch them do this on the field, it’s riveting,” Talbert said.