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\nSpend five minutes talking to a Clemson rugby alumnus you\u2019ll figure out why their sport has survived on campus for 50 years.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s something about the sport of rugby. I can\u2019t really put my finger on it. Once you get the bug, it kind of stays with you,\u201d said Scott Bridges, who played for the team from 1985 through 1987.
\nIt seems rugby has a way of slipping into the bloodstream. Players say it\u2019s hard to pin down precisely what it is that makes the sport so addictive, but the camaraderie involved might just have something to do with it.
\n\u201cGoing into a rugby match, it\u2019s a little bit of a battle,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cYou practice hard against one another all week, and then you have that other team you play against on the weekend. There\u2019s a lot of blood, sweat and tears that go into it. So you become close.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div><\/div>
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\nThe rugby community in the United States, though small, is strikingly tightknit. This past April more than 300 of Clemson\u2019s rugby alumnus and fans joined to watch the Tigers take on Dartmouth, as well as celebrate 50 years of Clemson rugby. Scrums on mucky pitches in the dim glow of early Saturday morning have a way of binding people together. Andras Bende, who played for Clemson rugby from 1994 through 1998, has experienced that bond. [pullquote]\u201cLet\u2019s put it this way, the rugby people outnumbered my side of the family at my wedding,\u201d[\/pullquote] said Bende.
\nSuch close bonds are a crucial part of the long, rich history of Clemson rugby. Organized rugby at the school dates to 1967, when four residents\u2014Nick Schoular, Geoff Tyers, Jeremy Pike and Frank N. Mora III\u2014founded the Clemson University Rugby Football Club. These students came from disparate locations around the globe. Schoular and Tyers hailed from the United Kingdom. Pike came from Australia and Mora came from Puerto Rico. Students from a variety of backgrounds joined the founders in the following years, and the club began to grow by word of mouth.<\/p>\n\n\u201cOne of the team members came down \u2026 Johnstone Hall tossing a rugby ball, which I had never seen before,\u201d said Jim McMillan, who played from 1969 through 1973. \u201cHe invited me out to see the sport and my life was changed forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Even with organic growth, Clemson Rugby was not exempt from growing pains. Good uniforms were difficult to acquire, as was a proper coach. In the trimmer years, junior and senior players served as coaches. A women\u2019s team popped up for a brief period in the 1970s, but it folded after only a few years in existence. Sustaining a successful rugby program was a challenge. \u201cThere were lean, difficult years when coaching and field concerns made it hard to field or organize a team,\u201d said Michael Fitzgerald, who played from 2005 through 2008. Though Fitzgerald is a more recent team member, he appreciates the contributions of the predecessors who kept the club afloat.
\nThe culture of the club in those years stands in contrast to the club that exists today. For the first 20 years of Clemson rugby\u2019s existence, it straddled the line between a social club and a serious team. That began to change in the 1990s, when the club started to contend in national competitions. Clemson performed admirably on a fall tour in 1996, defeating a Harvard team that had made it to the Elite Eight in the previous year. In 1998, the team would compete in the national playoffs in Texas.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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