The Troy Rugby Club is preparing to play host to its leg of the Mid South Series tournament this Saturday, March 30, when they take on clubs from Georgia-based colleges.
This includes teams such as the University of North Georgia, Morehouse College, Georgia Tech, Valdosta State and Georgia College and State University.
Chris Jenkins, a graduate student studying counseling from Mobile, Alabama, who’s also the team’s vice president, said the club is in a rebuilding phase that has been focused on recruiting players for the future while keeping current matches in mind.
“[It’s] definitely been a rebuilding season I would say,” Jenkins said. “We’re still as always working on recruiting, which recruiting [rugby] in Alabama isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do.”
Jenkins explained most students don’t even realize their college might have a rugby team right before they walk across the stage at graduation.
“We are kind of fighting with mostly people who don’t know that rugby is offered until they get to college. And then even when they get to college, people go their entire four years without even knowing that we have a team,” he said.
“So, trying to get people interested and keeping them interested has always kind of been a bane of the team to make sure they don’t die out. We’ve got a good set of four or five freshmen this year that are giving hope to the future of the club.
“Myles Parris (the club’s president and captain) and I went to every impact session over the summer and at the end of it, we had maybe 50-to-55 guys sign up saying they were interested. Now when you get that many people interested, we already knew to expect that out of 50 people we could maybe get 10 to actually come out.”
Jenkins revealed that since the rugby club isn’t a university sponsored sport, it can be tricky at times trying to raise funds for things like balls and uniforms– also known as kits.
“Over the past year-and-a-half, we’ve been trying to figure out what way for the club to kind of consistently get donations and be able to fundraise,” said Jenkins. “Recently, we got newer kits – but most people call them uniforms – around last March.
“We only got half a set … But last fall we had a combination of raised money from alumni donations, and we also raffled off some of our older jerseys that alumni have played and they wanted to have a piece of memorabilia.
“We finished the set [of uniforms] and they do kind of get expensive, but we managed to finish the set and buy a couple of new game balls and a couple of balls to practice with and just things that we needed.”
The team, which has anywhere from 10 to 17 members on tournament days depending on availability, holds practice every Monday and Wednesday from 6-8 p.m. on the band field behind Trojan Village 300. The team’s practices are usually co-ed with select matches also in a co-ed setting.
“Usually what we’ll do for practice is invite someone out if we run into them at the gym or walk by them somewhere. They can just come out and observe, ask questions and hop in if they would like.”
The Rugby Club kicks off its leg of the Mid South Series tournament this Saturday at 11:30 a.m., and Jenkins explained that anyone who would like to watch and see what’s going on is more than welcome to attend.
“We know that we’re going to be fighting with parking and attention since it’ll be Trojan Day,” he said. “We’re also hoping that since people are going to be taking tours and since you can see the band field from behind Trojan Village, hopefully they’ll be walking by and say ‘Oh, what’s that?’ And they’ll just kind of stop and come down and see what’s going on.”
For anyone interested in joining the rugby club or seeing what it’s all about, Jenkins and Parris can be contacted on Instagram @troytrojansrugby.
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