When applied engineering sciences senior Nawar Dimitry came to MSU as a freshman in fall 2010, the former high school football and basketball player was looking for a team that would allow him to stay active and compete.
It wasn’t long before Dimitry stumbled across the MSU Rugby Football Club. At the time, Dimitry had no clue how to play the sport.
Fast-forward five years down the road and Dimitry is now one of the club’s top players.
“It was unlike anything I had ever played before,” Dimitry said of his first time experiencing the sport. “It’s kind of a hybrid between football and soccer. ... There’s a lot of new rules you’ve got to learn as a new guy. ... It’s just a lot different than anything I’ve ever played. It’s a lot of fun, though.”
The MSU RFC is broken into two seasons of 15-on-15 80-minute games in the fall, and 7-on-7 14-minute games in the spring. MSU RFC president Todd Else said the name of the game can be boiled down to this: run forward, pass backward and if you’re on defense, tackle the man with the ball.
The club practices three times a week at 5:30 p.m., with many of those practices taking place on their pitch at Service Road field on the east side of MSU’s campus.
Although rugby is not an officially recognized sport by the NCAA, the club competes in a league known as NCAA Division I-A, the highest level of collegiate competition.
The club has its own coach and travels across the country to compete in tournaments and championships.
During the season, the club is broken up into three different teams — an A side for the most experienced players, a B side farm team, and a C side training team.
But despite the high level of competition, Else — an offensive lineman in high school who first got involved with the sport when he discovered he could run with the ball — makes it known the club is welcome to athletes of all backgrounds.
“We take everyone,” said Else, who has been playing the game since he was a junior in high school. “At least half, if not a majority of the kids on the team came on with no experience. ... We’ve had kids coming out where this is their first sport ever played, to having played anything in high school.”
And it’s this kind of acceptance and patience that’s had new members falling in love with the club.
“They are incredibly accepting,” said media and information freshman Josh Leppert, who had no previous rugby playing experience when he joined the club. “That was one of the strongest points for why I kept coming back to practice because their philosophy is that there is always something that you can learn about rugby ... the coaches treat everyone fairly, the veterans help out with the fundamentals. ... It’s great how everyone is treated so fair.”
But if there’s something else to make note of when assessing the MSU rugby squad, it’s just how close-knit they are.
Many of the members on the team have been friends for years, and are even roommates with many of their teammates.
“Being part of the team has by far been my favorite part of college,” MSU RFC vice president and finance junior Andy Boyd said. “The camaraderie of a rugby team is by far greater than anything I’ve ever seen in any sport I’ve played.”
