Although most people on this side of the pond don’t know a scrum-half from an eighth man, rugby is one of the most popular sports in the world.
Nick Doskey, accounting senior, is co-captain of Loyola’s rugby team. Doskey played two years of rugby at Jesuit High School in Dallas before joining Loyola’s team in the spring of his freshman year. He served as team treasurer as a sophomore and has been a co-captain as a junior and senior, along with marketing senior Jimmy Collins.
Next year’s captains are Brian Ralston, economics senior, and Matt Pierce, finance senior.
Since the re-opening of the school last year, Doskey has also been the team’s only coach.
“We had a coach pre-Katrina, but he lost his job because of the hurricane and moved away,” Doskey said. “After that, I’ve been coaching.”
Students founded the rugby team in 1996. It now belongs to the Division III Deep South conference of USA Rugby, a national governing body for men’s, women’s, collegiate, youth and high school rugby in the United States.
Other members of their conference are Tulane, Southern University, Louisiana Tech and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
They play Tulane next Friday at 4 p.m. on the lawn in front of the Reilly Recreation Center.
The team’s main season is spring, which consists of six to eight games; they usually play several games in the fall pre-season as well. Games are held at Gretna Pitch, the field used by the New Orleans Rugby Club. Because Gretna is a 20-minute drive from campus, the team uses the Residential Quad to practice.
“We practice two days a week, normally Mondays and Thursdays, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Res Quad,” Doskey said. “It’s harder because I feel like Loyola has started a lot of night classes, so we try to get as much in since we don’t have much time.”
There are 22 players, of which about half played rugby before college. Doskey, however, points out students who have never played before can apply the skills they’ve developed from other sports.
“A lot of the guys on the team played other sports in high school,” Doskey said. “It’s a combination of football and soccer, except the ball can’t be thrown forward.”
Another benefit to playing rugby is that it accommodates and requires different types of players, team members said.
“It’s a very fast-paced sport where the ball is in continuous play for two 40-minute halves. It requires a wide variety of players to fulfill various positions, which are numbered one through 15,” Doskey said.
Loyola’s rugby team is an opportunity for students with limited time to continue playing a sport, as well as an easy way to get involved on campus.
“Most of the other schools in our conference, like Tulane, have full-time coaches and better facilities,” Doskey said. “But we’re still a competitive team.”
To join the rugby team, “basically, just send me an e-mail, or just show up to practice. It’s pretty simple to get registered through USA Rugby,” Doskey said. “We have dues, which are usually $30 to $50 dollars a semester.”
Nicole Mundy can be reached at [email protected].
