Harding University’s rugby club is not a recognized NCAA sport through the school, but the players of the club continue to have an optimistic outlook for their future as a team.
The rugby team is growing more and more each year and expecting a great turn out. Junior Hunter Beck, rugby president, expects the team to grow a great amount each year.
“Last year we had a lot of people show up so we are expecting a bigger turn out this year,” Beck said. “We talked to people who were interested and put something on Pipeline. We are growing as a Harding feature. We have a lot more kids coming to campus and asking questions about us.”
Harding sports are supported by Harding with funds and advertising, but since rugby is a club, the support is up to the team.
Junior James Morgan said their advertising consists of mostly word of mouth.
“We have flyers,” Morgan said. “And most of it is through word of mouth, especially in the dorms. Beck talks with a lot of freshmen and sophomores in the dorms.”
Because the team will be playing against several secular universities, the team wants to promote rugby as a legitimate sport as well as a spiritual outreach.
“There is a lot of spiritual direction,” Morgan said. “We want to encourage men of faith on the field because a lot of the men we run into on the field do not really know what a Christian is. It is a little bit of outreach. After games we always ask the other team if we can pray with them.”
After losing their previous playing field to build the new softball field on the Harding campus, the Harding rugby club has been in search of a new playing field. Talks with Harding administration have resulted in plans to begin building the new rugby field that is set to be completed next fall.
According to Beck, the team has played on the women’s soccer field for the last several years, but when plans were made last fall for the school to build the new softball stadium, the team had to begin searching for a new place to practice.
The players always find a place to practice. They do not have a set place where they are going to have their home games. They may have to travel to Little Rock for every home game on top of traveling for every away game. There is hope for a new field in the near future though.
“Harding actually approved a fund to build us our own field,” Beck said. “They will start building it, so that is great. But even then, it was supposed to be ready this fall but they redid some apartments and the softball field so now they are saying it won’t be ready until next fall. We are definitely making progress.”
