‘Rugby Virginia’ Booming in Popularity

The English sport of rugby has been alive and well for the past two decades in the Washington, D.C. area, but has seen exponential explosion in growth since the NOVA U-19 Rugby Football Club won the Virginia State Championship in 2008.

NOVA is comprised of 15 athletes, as well as several from Oakton, Centreville and and was previously associated with the Potomac Rugby Union for its first 12 seasons. But three years ago, Chantilly High School teacher and NOVA coach Mike Murphy said Virginia chose to localize and split from the PRU.

“In 2008, all the teams in Virginia decided to make their own league and call it ‘Rugby Virginia.’ Most of the country is moving this way as rugby is exploding with individual teams,” NOVA U-19 Head Coach Mike Murphy said the night before the championship match. “They’re building everything like high school sports. When we won the state championship in 2008, there were only eight teams in the state at that point, but now there are 22 teams.”

NOVA had an excellent season in 2011 going undefeated in its conference at 6-0-1. The team reached the state championship game for the second time this past Saturday but lost 34-15 to the defending champion West End Football Club, which includes students from West Springfield, South County and Lake Braddock.

The sport is basically a hybrid of soccer and American football with 35-minute halves, a continuous clock and 15 players per team on the field. The ball can only be thrown backwards or laterally, and the player carrying the ball must cross the ‘try line’ (similar to the goal line in American football) and physically touch the ball down on the turf to be awarded the five points. The team then kicks a two-point conversion from the spot at which the player scored the try. A three-point kick may also be taken, much like a field goal in American football.

“You move the ball by running it and you get tackled, but instead of having a restart every time you get tackled, play just continues. You can restart [when needed] with a kick, or a lineout -- like a throw-in in soccer, but straight down the line,” Murphy said. “A 'scrum' is also a way of restarting where they huddle with 8 forwards each, crash into each other, the ball is rolled in the middle, and [each team] moves to get the ball back to their side.”

The coach believes the sport is finally getting past the stigma of beer-guzzling fraternity guys beating each other up on the field. On the contrary, Murphy said rugby is more of a contact sport than one of brutal collision, which has fewer serious injuries than American football and is extremely disciplined and strategic. He says each summer, kids as young as 7-years-old sign up for rugby in youth leagues across the state and nation.

“There’s been a huge growth in youth rugby in all the major [youth leagues]. My daughters are seven and nine, and they played summer rugby,” he said. “One of our best players is a Chantilly kid and he’s been playing since he was nine-years-old in Chantilly Youth Rugby and that’s rare, but hopefully not so much anymore.”

So, why has the sport suddenly boomed?

Murphy believes one reason is that USA Rugby has promoted the sport much more prominently in recent years due to the fact that the sport will be reintroduced into the 2016 Summer Olympics for the first time in nearly 90 years.

“With the Olympics coming up, the whole country and whole world is going to try and get a gold medal rugby team into the Olympics,” he said. “The more rugby hangs around, people get used to it and realize it’s an old-fashioned, good sport and they get accustomed to it.”

Now that rugby is becoming as common for children to play as soccer, does Murphy believe it will become part of high school athletic programs across the state?

“In five to 10 years, I would hope so. Yes, I’m thinking it will,” he said. “In some states there already are [teams] like in Tennessee, there are 78 high school rugby teams.”

Murphy has coached the NOVA U-19 team for 16 years and is proud of its success, growth and promising future. Throughout those years, Chantilly High athletes have made up the majority of the team, but the coach says there is always room for anyone interested in becoming involved with Rugby Virginia.

“With the different positions on the field, we always have a position for everyone. Any athlete can do well. Wrestlers do well, football players do well and soccer players do well,” the JMU grad said. “The best player we ever had was a basketball player… and then there are guys who just play rugby.”

For more information on Rugby Virginia, visit rugbyvirginia.com.