Following a successful 2011 campaign that saw the Ohio men’s club rugby team reach the Midwest finals, the team will try to take its game to the next level when it moves up to the Division I-A club level this fall.
After being ranked in the top 25 in Division II and reaching the Midwest final four before losing to Northern Illinois, Ohio will begin playing in its new division in 2012.
“Right now, the way USA Rugby is based, they decided to move every school that plays Division I football up to the Division I level,” said coach Willie Griffes, who played on the team as an undergraduate. “So it’s designed that way to increase competition and the marketability of the game of rugby.”
Griffes said that while the new conference has not been finalized, it will likely include Mid-American Conference teams such as Kent State, Miami, Ball State and Bowling Green.
“I think it’ll be good,” said senior captain Cam Williams. “The last two years we’ve went undefeated or only had one loss through all of our leagues, so we needed to step it up anyways.”
Despite an extremely small number of varsity rugby teams at the collegiate level, the sport of rugby has been gaining popularity nationwide for the last decade or so, Griffes said, and particularly in some of Ohio’s bigger cities.
The varsity and junior varsity teams at Ohio are made up of about 50 players. While some have played rugby before, other players usually have experience in other sports and make the switch in college.
“We’ve got a lot of guys from the Cleveland area that played, and also guys from Columbus,” Griffes said. “So that’s probably about half of what we get each year, and then there’s guys that played other sports and want to come out and check it out.
“The game growing in high school has definitely had an impact on guys being better and increasing the competition out here. We’ve seen that pay dividends with our program,” Griffes said.
Griffes said that because they are used to close contact situations, former wrestlers often end up as excellent rugby players.
The lack of varsity rugby teams and the abundance of club teams at the college level leaves a smaller gap in terms of quality of play than in most sports. One of the main differences is the contrast in how the teams are funded.
Club teams, like Ohio’s, are mostly self-funded.
“It’s kind of a constant battle with what resources are available each year depending on the budget,” Griffes said. “Most everything we do is kind of self-funded through the guys too, so being a club sport we also have to do our own fundraisers to be able to maintain and run a team.”
Despite possessing the label of club team, the Bobcats are determined to prove that they are not the average lackadaisical group.
“The whole kind of thing with being a Division I rugby program is that yes, we’re still considered a club sport with the school, but we’ve taken on the mentality that just being a club doesn’t mean we have to act like a club, we can still run our program like a varsity program,” Griffes said.
An essential part of that mentality is Griffes, who is in his third year as coach.
“Before I started, we’d been a captain-led team and we hadn’t had a coach until Willie (Griffes) came, so that’s been a good benefit for us,” Williams said. “We’re a much more organized organization than before, and so I think we’ve definitely grown a lot.”
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