It was through the efforts of rugby coach Sam Brock and team captain Alex Weed that the team turned from a slowly dissolving program into a competitive powerhouse.

By the fall of 2010, Loyola was in need of a rugby coach to serve as an authority figure to the team.

“We needed leadership, and Sam stepped right up,” said Weed, a finance senior.

Sam Brock has 24 years of rugby experience behind him. He started his career playing for the Shreveport Rugby Club. He then moved to the Metropolis Rugby Club, a Division 1 organization in Minneapolis, Minn., where he played for 10 years before moving to New Orleans and joining the NOLA Rugby Club.

Brock said he found out about Loyola’s rugby program through an email, which included Alex Weed’s contact information.

“I got an email from someone on the New Orleans club saying that Loyola needed a rugby coach, so I called Alex,” Brock said.

Brock said the first thing he noticed about the team was its shortage of players. According to Brock, a regular season rugby team is composed of 15 members. Loyola’s team had 11.

“The first game I coached was against Southeast Louisiana,” Brock said. “We had 12 people, and that was with me playing.”

To fix the shortage, Brock and Weed began recruiting.

“We recruit anybody that we see has a remote interest in rugby,” Brock said. “If somebody stops and watches us practicing, we’ll go up and introduce ourselves.”

Weed said he went as far as recruiting from high schools in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

According to Weed, the team practiced almost everyday over this past summer.

“People were touring the campus during the day, and we were always out there at 12:30, flipping tires and doing drills,” Weed said.

Also over the summer, the team participated in the Hot Summer Nights Tournament held in Hammond, La. The team’s first match was against Louisiana State University.

“When we first walked out onto the field, everybody knew who LSU was. People were saying, ‘Well that’s LSU, but who are they playing?’ Then we beat them 7-0, and all of a sudden everyone was talking about us,” Brock said.

Loyola went on to beat University of Lousiana at Lafayette 14-10, which moved them into the semifinals where they beat Mississippi State 26-0.

“And that set up a rematch with LSU because they had come through and made it to the finals,” Brock said.

After the first half of the game, Loyola was ahead 14-0, but after halftime both Brock and Weed agreed that the team was exhausted. According to Weed, LSU had a squad of 14 players, allowing a substitute for each player on the field.

“We had seven players. We didn’t have any substitutes,” Weed said. “Most of our players weren’t back at school yet.”

This year’s rugby team has over 30 members, more than half of which are freshmen and most of whom have high school rugby experience. According to Brock, the team’s goal this year is the Men’s Collegiate Division III National Rugby Championship.

“Our guys don’t talk about beating this college or beating that college,” Brock said. “Our guys talk about playing for the national championship.”

Scott O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Trainer Mauricio Urrutia takes down a player during practice. (Chika John)