Collegiate Rugby Research Paper

Blood, sweat and a whole lot of tape is what it takes to play one of the toughest sports in the world, rugby. Collegiate rugby is a very tough sport to play. Collegiate rugby has a plethora of pros as to why it is beneficial to play but has some cons as well.

Rugby is an amazing sport to play and is the best to play in college. Many advantages to playing collegiate rugby. The main advantage of playing collegiate rugby is that everyone is evenly sized. In high school rugby, some freshman are small and in contrast, seniors tower over them. However, in college everyone is basically done growing. Another advantage is that in collegiate rugby the university itself funds the program; on the other hand, high school programs must be funded by the players

The first and largest con is that if one is not strong or muscular everyone else is going to be bigger and stronger than you. For example, if a small freshman who just graduated high school joins a collegiate team, they could be going against a twenty-five-year-old man who goes to the gym seven times a week. Although this is like the high school scenario, it is to a greater degree. While a high school freshman could be going against a senior, there is not going to be that much of a difference in three years; on the other hand, a college freshman could be going against a man who is anywhere from his age to seven or eight years older than him. Another big con is traveling. Due to the sparsity of universities, collegiate rugby teams usually have to travel a distance to play their games. Sometimes teams even have to take multiple days and cross state lines. This traveling can cause players, who are also students, to miss vital class time. On the contrary, high schools are a lot more clumped together which prevents traveling; however, they are not allowed to miss school to travel in the first place. Lastly, the final con of collegiate rugby is the lack of games. Tying back to the sparsity of universities, this prevents collegiate teams from having lots of game experience. A collegiate team may play anywhere from five to seven games in a season whereas a high school team may