Not the Rugby You've Heard About

When I was two or three years old, my dad (whose rugby name was “Cockroach”) tore his retina during a game. He spent weeks – one of my earliest memories – in a darkened room before graduating to an eye patch.

The one time I decided to try the sport, going out for the college team, a girl broke her knee-cap during a routine practice run of a play.

Rugby, it seemed to me, was a violent sport, better left to the hooligans of the world.

It was a surprise, then, to learn that not only does Marin have a youth and high school rugby program, but that kids as young as eight and nine play on 14 different teams in the Marin Highlanders program.

“We focus on the spirit of the game,” said frosh-soph coach and Sleepy Hollow resident John Vanderwal. “We’re here to show them a different side of rugby.”

The emphasis for the younger kids, who don’t graduate to full contact until the U-12 (under 12-years-old) division, is on the fundamentals of the sport – how to tackle, pass and run a play. There are U-10, U-12, and U-14 (junior high) teams now, filled with kids, but it all started five years ago with just 14 kids wanting to learn how to play this unique sport.

The best description of rugby for those unfamiliar with it is that it's a mix of soccer and football with no pads and few timeouts.

“We started it just because there was no rugby for youth in Marin,” said San Anselmo resident Gordon Wright. Wright, Pat Farley and Rob Lopez were all classmates on the 1982 Redwood High squad that won a rugby national title. They also all had kids who wanted to play the sport their dad’s had played. The 14 kids that first season “included my two, Pat’s two and Rob’s two,” joked Wright.

Will Wright, a Drake sophomore now and Gordon's son, was on that first youth team as a seventh grader and helped spread the word – bringing more and more kids each new season.

“They told their friends and those friends told friends,” said Will, who now plays on Vanderwal’s frosh-soph team.

In fact, getting kids to play a sport they may have never seen on TV hasn’t turned out to be much of a problem. Though Redwood has historically dominated Marin rugby with the founding of the Redwood High School rugby program back in 1979 by Farley, Farley’s father and his brother, a full 13 Drake freshmen and sophomores now play on the Marin Highlanders team.

Part of that growth in the Drake community has come from word of mouth, but some of it has also come from other coaches.

Drake football coach Dan Kenilvort, who also played rugby in college, encourages the football players to go out for the Highlanders team in the off-season. And, most of the kids on the Highlanders play football, basketball, water polo or soccer in the fall/winter.

“They really jumped right in,” said Kenilvort. The coaches, he said, focus on teaching the fundamentals and a respect for the sport. Football players, for example, can be frustrated by the differences in tackling without pads and have to learn how to do it properly to avoid injury.

Kenilvort’s son also plays on the U-10 rugby team. “I thought it would just be 12 kids running around in one big mess, but I’m real impressed.”

The focus at every level has been teaching the kids about a sport with a long history and unique aspects that they may not have grown up with. And, it’s paid off.

In 2008, the Marin Youth Rugby Club merged with the high school Marin Highlanders team, which had a long history of success on the shoulders of the Redwood Giants. (The newly merged efforts are now simply known as the Marin Highlanders.) That means that the kids who are freshman and sophomores now are some of the first to have gone all the way through the program – and it makes a difference.

“By the time I’m getting them now some of the kids have been in the program for five years,” said Varsity Highlanders coach David Cingolani.

Though the youth season is over, that Varsity team, which won the Redwood Empire Conference for the third year, plays in a playoff game tonight against the San Francisco Golden Gate Club. If they win that, they will then move on to the NorCal Semi-Final in Morgan Hill on Friday, followed by the final on Saturday. 

But, being a fringe sport, however much you’re growing, still presents challenges.

“We’re having a hard time getting a field [for the playoff game],” said Cingolani after Thursday’s practice. The teams, for the most part, practice and play at Hall Middle School. Field space, though, if you don’t have a home turf is always a challenge.

The team will also send five kids to Arizona to compete in the High School All-American trials next month – a select invitation: Schuylar Whiting (St. Ignatius), Henry Baylor (Marin Catholic), Brendan Hardiman (Redwood), Grant Collins (Redwood), and Jeff Calzaretta (Redwood).

The frosh-soph team plays in their final tournament in the Gold division at the end of the month.

And after that?

Once the season wraps up, the players will mostly go back to the other sports they play until its rugby season again.

“When I’m playing rugby, I like rugby better,” said Will Wright, who also plays on Drake’s very competitive water polo team.

And the program will continue to grow as families realize this isn’t the rugby you’ve heard about or the one your parents played. There’s been talk, as well, of creating a girls team, said Vanderwal, though girls are always welcomed to join the youth programs. 

'There's very few injuries," he said.