Rugby to Take on Boston's Best in the Beanpot

The Beanpot. Boston's elite inter collegiate sports tournament. A time when Bob Uecker's words that "Sports carve out their own wonderful universe" come to life. A time when the best come to play. And, of course, a time for rugby.

Rugby? Isn't that football's stepchild, a game only played in Her Majesty's Old Empire, a game that is an imperfect cross between handball and soccer and other very un-American sports? Well, at Harvard, nothing could be further from the truth. Rugby as a club sport is alive and thriving, and today's rugby's Beanpot takes place at Soldier's Field.

And like all Beanpots, rugby's version takes on a special place in the players minds. Bragging rights, more than anything else, is what's most at stake for the participants.

"The Beanpot is a matter of pride," says junior Co-captain Chris Baker.

The Beanpot consists of the four traditional colleges--Harvard, Boston College, Boston University and North eastern. And this year's tournament takes on even extra Crimson significance because it will be played on Harvard's home turf.

After the official fall season, Harvard rugby plays only unofficial games and tournaments in the spring. The rugby national tournament is played based on fall and winter records. Although the Crimson possessed a solid 7-4 record during that time, that was not enough to win the northeast region and go on to qualify for the national tournament.

But it's not as if only the presence of a Beanpot legitimates rugby. Rugby, like some Harvard sports, has a rich story to tell.

An All-Inclusive Club

Rugby is not really played at the varsity level in the U.S., but its status as a club sport has not stopped its growth. At Harvard, anyone who tries out for the team automatically makes it, and the team just creates different sides to match skill levels.

So the men's team often fields an A, B, C and even D side. This purely democratic system hardly reduces the level of competition, however. As anyone who has seen a rugby game can attest to, the higher level teams are made up exclusively of people who are very good athletes. Most of them played varsity sports in high school.

"Most of the people who play on A side played sports in high school," Baker says. "Only two or three [including Baker] played rugby before Harvard, but the level of play is very competitive."

Because rugby is only a club sport, it receives no funding from the athletic department. Thus the players must finance the team and all its expenses. What this also means is that the club must pay for the coach (Al Baker), and that the Co-captains (Baker and Chris Matarese) pick which players play on which side. Like any club, men's rugby has officers that run it administratively. Junior Steven Raizes is currently the president.

Due to the complications that arise out of such a self-finance structure, it is often difficult to arrange trips. Only A side (and some substitutes) went to the Cherry Blossom Tournament in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

"It was efficient to take two vans to D.C. for the Cherry Blossom," Baker explains.

But, if anything, the extra effort needed to sustain the team off the field only makes the players tighter on the field. A side won the third division championship in the Cherry Blossom, and finished third in the Ivy League Tournament two weeks ago.

The club aspect of the team also provides a great atmosphere for the players socially.

"We make life-long friends," Baker says. "We have great road trips, and it's a great social experience."

And no doubt one of the greatest social experiences was when the team went to the Bahamas over spring break to play three games in the warm Caribbean sun.

The Game Itself

Rugby is a complex game which combines the non-stop action of soccer, the sheer force of footbal, and the speed of basketball. While this description might seem a bit too broad (or, alternately, too imaginative), it nonetheless is accurate.

Consider 15 men on a side, playing without padding. Throw in a ball shaped like a football but bigger and rounder, play on a long horizontal field and put up goal posts. Add no substitution except for injuries. Finally, toss in strategy, a lot of running and a bit of kicking, and you have a sketch of what rugby is.

The rugby ball can be advanced down the field through running, kicking, or passing laterally or backwards. Five points are scored when a player runs the ball over the other team's end line and touches the ball down. The conversion kick through the goal posts is then worth two points, but the kick must be made from the angle at which the five points were scored. Thus, scoring near the middle of the field is much preferred. At any time, three points can be scored by kicking the ball through the goal posts, but because of the intense pressure constantly applied to the ball, scoring like this is relatively rare.

One of the most distinctive features of the game is the "scrum." A scrum looks like a giant, violent, amalgamated huddle. During a scrum, both teams form semi-circles and surround the ball on opposite sides. The ball is then rolled into the middle of the teams, and each side tries to push the other side off the ball and gain possession of the ball.

Scrums are called, for instance, when a penalty is called on one team for say, hitting the ball forward with a player's hand. The other team can then put the ball in the scrum, and that team is more likely to gain possession.

Rugby, like all sports, has many other peculiar rules and features. And if many of these might seem odd to the uninitiated, just remember that a study was once done on people who knew little or nothing about sports, and it found that baseball was the least attractive and most complicated to these sports novices.

Sometimes, it seems, the most nuanced sports are the ones with the most charm. (Or, in the case of baseball, at least used to be.)

Men at Work

Don't let the rough stuff fool you--rugby is very much a thinking man's game. Although tackling without pads might make you think that the brute force of a Cortez Kennedy rules the sport, the smarts and athleticism of the Joe Montanas are really more dominant.

"Rugby is a great strategic game," Baker said. "You're always learning. The game has the capabilities to always make you think. That's one reason why the Ivies are stronger at the sport. Bright kids do better. There is more thinking than you think."

Baker also stressed that the game put more of a premium on athleticism than strength.

"The game is more athletic than physical," he said.

Contrasting rugby with American football, he explained: "Because we don't have padding, you don't really have the weaponry to hit hard, and you can't put all your effort into one hit because the game is still going on."

There are two main positions in rugby, backs and forwards. Forwards are roughly like linemen in football, while backs are the speedier types.

There are many different reasons why people join the rugby team, from the desire to compete at a high level for varsity-type athletes to the curiosity the previous unathletic have about team sports.

Baker, as noted above, is one of the very few to have played rugby before Harvard. A lot of players play for three or four years, and that tells greatly about the sport's appeal.

"It's unlike anything I'd ever done before," sophomore Matt Doberman, who plays on B side, says. "I decided to come out as a freshman, because it is not as rigid as a varsity sport, but it's still an extremely competitive sport."

The A side Beanpot games will be played today at Soldiers Field at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m., while the B side games will be played at 2 and 4 p.m.

Next week, look for a feature on women's rugby at Harvard. The women travel to Dartmouth today to play in the Ivy League Tournament.