With less padding than football and more contact than soccer, rugby can be very rough and the team has found it hard to keep recruits. Despite this, the 2023–24 season of WSU rugby has proven to the school and the athletes that success can be found through hard work and determination. 

Kyle Volk, rugby team captain and junior athletic training major, said that he considered walking on to the football team but decided against it and instead focused on rugby and has been playing for the last three years.

Although he had never played rugby before, Volk said that there were similarities between other sports he had played.

“It’s kind of a nice mix,” Volk said. “I played soccer and football so it wasn’t super hard to pick up but there definitely was a pretty steep learning curve.”

Volk said that to be prepared for the sport he just needs to rely on his practice, go to the gym and take care of his body when he does get injured.

“I’ve definitely said multiple times that it felt like I got hit by a semi-truck afterward,” Volk said.

Jeremiah Miguel, a junior computer science major and team vice president, said that he moved from Singapore to go to WSU. He had played rugby in high school and joined the WSU team freshman year. 

The game also took its toll on his body when he tore his knee playing against Oregon State at the end of his freshman year.

Although he was cleared to be back on the field in six months, it took him a bit to get over the mental block of not playing for a while. Miguel said that his coaches ensured that he was fully recovered before they let him play, even after his physical therapist cleared him.

“It’s really not worth it, especially in rugby to come back and your body’s not at 100% because you’re just going to get hurt again,” Miguel said.

Volk said that this year the new recruits stuck with the sport, which has been different in the past.

“It’s kind of been an issue in the past, where we’ll have a bunch of new guys come out and then they either get into contact or they just find out they don’t like the sport and we’ll lose probably half of them,” Volk said.

Despite the toughness of the sport and the physical toll it takes on the players, the 2023–24 season has proved successful for the WSU rugby team. Miguel said that the fall semester was the best season in the past few years, with the Cougs being ranked No. 30 in the country.

The first tournament of the spring semester will be on April 6 at Oregon State University, Volk said.

“I’m pretty confident,” he said. “I think we have a lot of talent.”

Miguel said this year the team has set their sights on nationals this year and would travel to Washington D.C. if they won their tournament or qualified.