The University of Rhode Island men’s club rugby team recently wrapped up its fall 2023 season.
They finished with a 3-4 record, playing six games in the regular season and one postseason bowl game. They opened up with a 17-14 home win against the University of Connecticut to start 1-0. The Rams compete in Division I AA in the Liberty Conference.
However, they dropped their next four games against Yale University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston College and Columbia University. They closed their season out with a road victory against Buffalo University and a bowl game victory against Nazareth College.
URI Head Coach Daryll Brooks gave his thoughts on the team’s fall season.
“Ultimately, our goal every time we play is to have a winning record that you want to build off of,” Brooks said. “We do things well that are definitely a step in the right direction, but no matter what sport, the goal is always to win so we did fall a bit short of that.”
Looking ahead to their spring season, they will be playing mostly sevens. While rugby typically has 15 players on the field per team and two 40 minute halves, sevens is where each team has seven players on the field and two seven minute halves.
Rhody has its sights set on playing in the Liberty Conference sevens tournament. They have hopes to win the tournament and punch their ticket to the National Collegiate Rugby tournament, which will be from April 26-28, 2024, in Washington DC. They will also compete in the Beasts of the East tournament, which Is fifteens instead of sevens and is held in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
Rhody won the Beasts of the East tournament two years ago and finished in second last year. The Rams will look for another strong performance in the tournament this spring.
Coach Brooks highlighted how some players have picked up the game recently and made an immediate impact.
“Jack Sullivan led our team in tries and it’s only his third year playing, so he’s been one of our better players for us,” Brooks said. “Anir Gubbala is another guy who didn’t really play in high school and had a lot of injuries that he had to come back from. Those are two guys with less experience who’ve picked it up quickly and have been killing it for us.”
Third-year team captain Andrew Reicher spoke about how some teammates are learning as they go.
“At least half the guys on our team didn’t play in highschool and it’s completely new to them here,” Reicher said.
Reicher also touched upon how watching teammates with little to no experience grow into roles on the team.
“It’s really awesome to see people from all different athletic backgrounds come in to learn the game and fall in love with it like we all did,” Reicher said.
Reicher has seen teammates pick up the game for the first time one semester and become starters by the next. Given all the different sports that team members came from, he commented on how a specific background is not more beneficial than others in order to play the sport.
“It really doesn’t matter where you come from as long as you know how a team feels and a team works,” Reicher said.
He emphasized that rugby is a sport that can be picked up quickly and being new to it is nothing to be afraid of.
“You don’t need a lot of experience to play,” Brooks said. “This is a sport where most people haven’t played before. It’s about going out there and just trying it. I think it’s a sport everyone should play at one point.”
As Rhody turns the page to the spring 2024 season, they have high expectations and a lot to build off of from what was accomplished in their fall season. Brooks saod the team is filled with optimism and hopes to continue to build forward and make strides towards being a respected team in the Liberty Conference and Division I AA.