After winning the Men’s National Collegiate Rugby Midwest Small College Championship 62-12 in their first semester in the league, the Hillsdale College Club Rugby team is back in the full swing of things in the Allegheny Rugby Union.

In a recent friendly tournament at John Carroll, Hillsdale encountered challenges with several new players and some regulars missing due to Parents Weekend. Despite losing all three games, players said they gained experience with seven-player rugby after competing with 15 players in past matches.

“In fifteens, you have 80 minutes of play, but in sevens, it’s a 14-minute game with two seven-minute halves, making it a much faster and more intense experience,” Sophomore Elijah Pangrazio said.

Heading into the current season, the team faces the challenge of a smaller player pool. 

“We have about 12 core guys showing strong interest. It’s a busy time, and people have harder classes,” Junior Connor Khoury said. 

The selection process for sevens focuses on performance in practice, with the coach assessing attributes like speed and agility. 

“Deciding who goes is about looking at speed, who’s working the hardest in practice. It’s performance in practice to get game time,” Pangrazio said. 

Junior winger  Israel Meyers said the team faced multiple challenges during the sevens rugby tournament, including dwindling numbers. 

“We had a tough road to head down.” Meyers said, “We were down a lot of players because of our Parents Weekend. So the deck of cards is already stacked against us.” 

Meyers said  the team exhibited resilience through three back-to-back high-intensity 15-minute matches. 

“When you play sevens in tournaments, it’s a lot different than if we had every weekend like three losses in a row”, Meyers said. “Playing fifteens, these are 15-minute matches, quick little snapshots on something that we’re just getting into the groove of, and we’re expecting better results in these upcoming tournaments, given the fact that we’ll be playing with our full side.” 

Pangrazio said the team’s new coach, Chuck Hickey is taking over for Robert Brandau, who coached the team for the past 2 semesters. 

“It’s a completely student-run club. We had an election, and it was like, ‘Okay, I want Chuck,’ and that was it,” Pangrazio said. 

Despite the recent tournament losses, Pangrazio said he is confident in the team’s potential, especially as they have more time to develop skills, conditioning, and teamwork. 

“We have a lot to work on. We’ve been practicing maybe a month this semester, and for some guys, this is the first three months of rugby they’ve ever played in their life,” Pangrazio said.

Khoury said the camaraderie and sportsmanship in rugby is unique.

“It’s a much more gentlemanly sport,” Khoury said.

Meyers said Winston Churchill accurately described rugby culture by calling it a “barbarians’ sport played by gentlemen.”

“We’ve got a team with such incredible grit and chutzpah that sometimes when I look around the field, I feel like I’m playing a barbarian sport with barbarians,” said Meyers.