Someone once said “If you gave kids a ball, a goal and a field and just told them to go play, they’d play rugby.” Perhaps that is true. The game is very logically played – if you have the ball and you run into a pack of defenders in front of you, you throw it to someone one behind you – and is gaining popularity throughout the country. Now, two grassroots efforts in the metro-Richmond area are helping the sport catch hold in central Virginia.

  The Hanover Youth Sports League and the Richmond Lions got their starts in very different ways but the two young programs are flourishing and through competition – mostly with each other – are bringing the basics of the game to young players.

  Rugby? What’s that?

  Rugby is best described as a cross between soccer and American football. In fact it is widely considered the father of American football and, in a lot of ways resembles American football, but is a continuous, faster paced game much like soccer.

  The first thing you notice about rugby, even on the professional and collegiate level, where full-body tackling is allowed, is that gear is at a minimum. Players wear a soccer-like uniform of a T-shirt, shorts and cleats, no head gear though mouth guards are generally recommended and professionals sometimes wear a flexible headband and no shin guards.

  The second thing you notice is that the game never stops. Play starts on a kick-off, a fairly tricky skill because the ball is not simply kicked from a tee or a place holder but is dropped to the ground and kicked on the upward bounce. A team fields the ball and takes off. As they are tackled or in many youth rugby games, touched, players pitch the ball backwards to teammates. Team members cannot run ahead of the ball carrier. Play does not stop for an interception as teams must quickly assume defensive and offensive roles.

  Scoring happens in three different ways. A team can score a try which is when a player carrying the ball places the ball on the ground in their opponents’ in-goal (an end-zone like area). Though a team may be in the in-goal area, they attempt to get the try as close to the center of the field as possible for the conversion. A conversion is the point-after attempt and is taken from a spot on the field about 10 yards onto the field in line with where the try was scored. It can be either a drop kick or a place kick. A try is worth five points, a conversion is worth two.

  Teams can also score a dropped goal which is a drop-kick taken on the run during play. The kick must go through the uprights and is worth three points.

  Passes, kicks, tackles and scoring all happen while on the run, which makes rugby a great place to develop skills for other sports.

  “All the west coast [football] teams are so good because their players play rugby in the spring and football in the fall and [in rugby] they all get to touch the ball,” Kevin M. Kilgore, organizer and head coach of the Hanover rugby team said. “It’s a great compliment to soccer and football … I’m hearing from a lot of parents that these kids who have been playing for me for a couple of years … are much better at other sports because they learn how to run and catch and kick and be a team in this sport.”

  Another important facet of the game is that there are no stand-out players. Everyone has to play together and know how to quickly find an open teammate and be able to pass and throw and do all the essential functions of the game and they have to be able to do them quickly because any one player carrying the ball will find themselves surrounded by the other team in a hurry.

  The ball is bigger and more round than a football but has the same oblong shape. It is flat on both ends and lighter but harder than a typical football which makes it easier to catch and kick.

  Rugby is also a great example for sportsmanship. It is tradition in the sport for the home team to host a party or picnic or some sort of get-together for the visiting team, which as Richmond Lions club president Charles Grant explained is simply to let by-gones be by-gones.

  “What happens on the field, stays on the field,” Grant said. “You play hard, you compete against each other, but at the end of the day, what happened during the game doesn’t matter. You come together and chat and eat and forget about all the competition stuff.”

  Richmond and Hanover enjoyed a lunch at Hanover Tavern after their games July 12 and Hanover furthers that concept in the youth program by simply not keeping score.

  “I don’t let kids ask me what the score is,” Kilgore said. “It doesn’t matter as long as they’re having fun and learning about the game.”

  As the only two programs in the area, Hanover and Richmond are looking to develop the sport on the middle school and high school level, though both are in the developmental stages themselves.

  Terrible twos

  In just their second year as a club, the Richmond Lions are certainly not suffering from the ‘terrible twos.’ A branch-off of the well-established adult program, the Lions, so far, have drawn most of its players from kids who grew up watching their parents play club rugby.

  “We had so many people affiliated with the men’s club and we all have kids and they all liked going out and seeing Daddy play rugby,” Grant said. “We noticed especially at our home games, we’ve have a big collection of kids playing around with the ball and wanting to play and it was just a logical thing to say ‘Let’s get these kids some uniforms and teach them how to play.’

  The Lions’ youth program began last summer with organized practices to teach interested kids game rules and basic styles of play. The team only began playing in games at the end of the summer when they invited a team from northern Virginia to the area to test their skills.

  “They were good. They walked all over us, but the kids learned a lot, they had fun and so … those kids are [now] passing that ball, kicking it through the uprights and doing all the things that they need to do and they’re really coming along,” Grant said.

  The Lions have no age range on players though they haven’t fielded anyone yet below the age of 6 or above 17. Right now, the team consists mostly of players between the ages of 9 and 12.

  Just turning five

  The Hanover program has been around for four summers now and was born out of a conversation at an adult rugby tournament between Kilgore, his oldest daughter and a friend who works in rugby supplies.

  “My kids were small and I’d retired from playing and we were at an adult tournament that we were hosting here in Hanover one Christmas and my daughter Christina came up to me and said ‘Dad, I’d like to play.’ And Matt, who is a friend of the family and a big vendor of rugby supplies said ‘Kevin, you need to start a team here’ and gave me some balls. So that summer I got with Parks and Rec and advertised it and we got 13 kids [to] come out,” Kilgore recalled.

  The team has steadily grown though this is the first year, according to Kilgore, that Hanover has had an even split between male and female players. Previously, the team was mostly girls, which is still evident when the older team takes the field. The 11-13 year old team is still predominantly female and can go all female depending on how many players are needed on the field.

  “I’ve got a young man who’s 7 all the way to … my older daughter is 13,” Kilgore said.

  Bringing it to the masses

  Both teams have seen some growth in numbers for the summer programs but the big push is to get rugby into area middle and high schools. Rugby is prominent in northern Virginia where high school and middle school teams compete regularly and are starting to supply some of the top prospect for college teams where, for most of the sports’ history in the U.S. players were getting their first taste of the sport.

  Kilgore, who is the youth development coordinator for the Virginia Rugby Union says he is working on getting the sport into more schools in the central Virginia region and indicates there are plans at Hanover and Patrick Henry high schools to start club tackle teams for both boys and girls. The teams would not be coed and the sport is traditionally a spring sport.

  “As the youth programs grow, we’re using the Washington area model as our model down here,” Grant said. “We’re trying to emulate whatever they’re doing up there [because] rugby up there is huge. All these schools have … a well organized rugby team. That’s our plan, to get these guys, as they go on in years and get on in high school, they can help organize the high school teams.”

  Both Grand and Kilgore point to soccer and lacrosse and the growth that those two sports have seen as another model for growing the sport in the area and nationally and would be happy to serve as a jumping point and feeder program for area high schools.

  “It’s the second most popular sport in the world,” Kilgore said. “We just haven’t been developing it here in the youth age level. Soccer did such a wonderful job and that’s what this program is all about.”

  Information about the Hanover rugby club is available at www.hanoveryouthrugby.org or by contacting Kilgore at (804) 559-1041 and information about the youth and adult programs for the Richmond Lions is available at www.richmondlions.com.

  Sara Page is the sports editor for the Midlothian Exchange.