A Short History of Rugby in the United States by Alex Goff, www.goffonrugby.com; (edited for length)
Rugby in the United States has a long and varied history. The original college gridiron football game between Princeton and Rutgers is generally accepted to have had more in common with the rules of rugby than those of football.
The University of California began playing rugby in the 1880s and during the early years of the 20th Century, when gridiron was banned from college campuses, The Golden Bears rugby team played in front of huge crowds. In the early 1900s, the club game also took root with Olympic Club, started in San Francisco and led by Edgar Pomeroy,
While American football took hold of the nation's sporting consciousness, rugby continued to be played. Many of the stars from Cal, Stanford, and UC Davis joined the USA Olympic team, helping them to Gold Medals in 1920 and again in 1924.
College campuses were where rugby held on in America through the middle of the 20th century. Doc Hudson was the life blood of the Cal program in the Depression years, and rugby thrived in the East, too. Former White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker played rugby for Princeton in the late 1940s, and current president George W. Bush played fullback for Yale in the 1960s.
In the 1960s the game enjoyed a revival as something of a counterculture sport. Cal, which had carried the torch through the 1930s and onward, expanded its schedule and even toured New Zealand and Australia in 1965 and again in 1972, beating New Zealand Universities. UCLA took on the game and participated in a still-heated rivalry with Cal and the University of British Columbia.
The graduates of these schools started forming clubs. Slowly these clubs coalesced into an organized form, with all-star teams being formed and touring overseas. USA Rugby was formed in 1975 and Dennis Storer became the coach of the first USA national team, which played Australia in January, 1976 in the first official modern test match.
The formation of the Eagles, as the national team is called, in the golden era of amateur rugby, caused waves in the world game. The Americans had arrived, and while they were raw, they were exciting to watch. Having a national team formalized the territorial teams, and the Inter-Territorial Championship (ITT) was first played in 1977 as the trial for the USA team.
With the emergence of a national team, and therefore a place in the consciousness of World rugby, American rugby started to develop a series of championships. The men's club championships started in 1979 and the collegiate championships followed in 1980.
In 1979 also the women's club championships were held, with Florida State University, led by No. 8 Kathy Flores, winning. Women's rugby in America was a natural progression of the American woman's love of sports and desire for equality in all things. The passion for the sport and the emergence of players who had learned the game in college was palpable, and it was little surprise that women's rugby not only thrived, but dominated.
Flores led the first USA women's team in 1987 and four years later the USA was World Champions and visited the White House. For the next ten years they remained one of the best in the World, placing second in the World Cup final in 1994 and again in 1998.
Meanwhile the men's team had much further to go. Wins were hard to come by, but there were moments to savor. Invited to the 1987 World Cup they won their opening match against Japan. Other milestone games:. Defeated Canada 28-16 in 1988, the best result over Canada ever until 2003; Won three in a row over Japan in 1991; Lost a hotly contested match to rugby powerhouse Australia 26-22 in 1993.
In 1996 the USA had its best season ever. Winning 4 and losing six, they could so easily have won all ten, as they lost to Ireland, Canada (twice), Hong Kong, Japan, and Argentina all by margins of seven points or less.
By then the star of the team was Dan Lyle, a former NFL prospect who would, along with Tom Billups and Luke Gross, play over seas and become the first professional American rugby players. By 1998 Lyle was one of the best at his position in the World and a bona fide superstar.
In 1997 the USA Super League was formed. Like the national team and the ITTs, and so much else in American rugby, it was born out of necessity and fostered by entrepreneurial rugby people. The Super League served as a true national league of the best clubs in the country and has survived and flourished for nine seasons.
In the last ten years or so, American rugby has seen huge growth at the younger end of the spectrum. Where once there were two or three or four high school teams in a state, now there are 20. Girls rugby grew from nothing (if there were teams they had to play colleges because they were the only team around) to about 150 today.
The college game has also grown. Colleges and high schools have made rugby a varsity sport. The USA U19 boys and girls teams, collegiate All American men and U23 women all play regularly scheduled games and tour overseas just about every year.
Clubs are now seriously recruiting from colleges and high school teams, and colleges are seeing the benefit of bringing in players who have a few years of rugby already under their belts.
In 2004 the USA team named Kort Schubert team captain. He was the first USA captain to have learned his rugby in an American high school, and a top-flight athlete who had chosen rugby as his sport. It was a milestone that was hardly noticed because Schubert's story is now not rare. Kids play rugby.