One of the newer clubs at Dixie State College is the Rugby Club, a club sport. Several players and supporters feel rugby could become the new contact sport of the future in the United States.
For most Dixie State students, rugby is a foreign game and a brutish game. But students have rarely thought of rugby on the DSC campus as a game which helps enforce the college’s mission statement.
Team manager Doug Gubler said, “I think it’s really good for the college to see students having fun, and I enjoy it personally; yes I enjoy it, but I like to be able to know that their careers and their schooling, they can better and better students.”
Indeed, most general sports fans see the physical, brutal sense of the game but rarely see the intellectual side of the one of the world’s most popular games.
“It’s a mind game,” team captain Joseph Feula said. “If you look at a lot of the good teams out there, they aren’t too big but they’re smart with the ball. You have to know how to create gaps, so it requires a lot of thinking.”
Football may be the most popular sport in the United States, but some DSC rugby players think rugby is the sport of the future of the world.
“Anywhere else, football isn’t as big; just here in the U.S.,” team captain Brad Godinet said. “Internationally, it’s going to be in the Olympics this coming year and after that, I feel it’s really going to catch on and it’ll be a fan favorite because of how physical it is. At the same time, it’s played by gentlemen.”
DSC Rugby has one match left this season, at Utah Valley University, before taking a break for the winter and starting preparations for the spring season. The team has already competed at the USA Rugby Sevens Tournament in Las Vegas during their tenure.
