By Brittany Burke

While rugby may have been the forefather to arguably the most watched American sport, football, the game, rules, leagues and athletes still remain widely unknown, especially on the CCSU campus.

Like the majority of club sports in the CCSU community, the men’s rugby team has trouble gaining a solid following of supporters despite the fact that the team is having one of the best seasons in the club’s history dating back to the 1970’s.

The rugby team finished regular season play on Oct. 30 with a loss to Springfield College, 33-16. Despite the loss the team had a strong season of 5-2 and advanced to the New England Rugby Football Union DIII playoffs, beating Bryant 48-7 in the first game.

“Everything is going good so far, everyone’s putting in a lot of work and it’s the best season the rugby club has had at Central in the better part of a decade,” said B squad member Chris Weeks. “I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have a coach and beforehand everyone was doing their own thing, but everyone practices regularly and now they’re even starting to do it at night at like eight o’clock in the bubble, everyone’s starting to run just to get into it for next time.”

As a member of the B squad, the group that will make the move to the A squad as members of the club graduate, Weeks is able to observe and learn the game from some of the best on the team such as Jake Dilts and Marcus Giansanti. He attributes the team’s success to the immense sense of team that can be found out on the pitch.

“There’s definitely a lot of sense of team together,” Weeks said. “I’ve played football, soccer track and I’ve never had like such a sense of teamwork as coming to the rugby games…rugby’s pretty confusing and everyone without missing a beat, if you’re doing something wrong they’ll tell you you’re doing something wrong or they’ll give you the proper instruction without getting on your case.”

The team may have begun to come together, find an identity and take shape with the help of Coach Eric Rentz, a former CCSU rugby player and member of the Hartford Wanderers, but the athletes still face challenges in making their presence known amongst the CCSU student community, while also securing sufficient funds to have a proper uniforms and equipment.

To ensure they reach both goals the team held a car smash in the CCSU student center, raising $140 to go toward new jerseys and the much needed training equipment.

“We’re fundraising for the team that way we could either get new jerseys or we can get new training equipment because with our training we don’t have a lot of I guess amenities or luxuries that a lot of other teams have like tackling pads where you can learn how to tackle someone,” Weeks said. “But the coach has been really creative in showing us different ways to build up our skill level but it would just be really nice to have some things for people to use.

“Basically all we do for practice is conditioning. We do a lot of running then we scrimmage for hours, it’s like 3:30 to 6:30. It’s a hell of a practice. Part of it is just to bring attention to rugby just to have the squad out there get people interested because we don’t think we’ll make a ton of money.”

As the team enters the postseason the team will play to keep the season alive, but the work won’t end with the regular season. The team, while only being a “club” sport will continue to train and promote the team to get the CCSU community excited about the tough as nails game known as rugby.