Sheer Determination Births Amity Rugby Club

While they didn’t know each other, back in the early 1990’s Ed Walsh and Rich Webster were both college students who played rugby.  A decade later as parents of young boys, they met at a Cub Scout Pack 902 in Woodbridge, began to chat and soon learned that both had been avid rugby players. Webster, who was still playing rugby for the New Haven Old Black Football Rugby Club, and Walsh agreed that it would be nice to someday form a high school rugby team at Amity so their sons could enjoy the sport.

Fast forward that friendship a few more years. With their sons now at Amity, Walsh and Webster decided that the BOW region should form a rugby team. Three years ago, they began to organize a team by sending out feelers seeking high-school age boys who wanted to learn how to play the sport. Walsh admitted that while scholastic rugby has only limited participation in the eastern USA, it is a very popular sport in western high schools. He estimated that there are currently eight Connecticut high schools playing rugby. That group includes Cheshire, Fairfield Prep, Simsbury, Waterford, South Windsor, Southington, Greenwich, and Hand. Simsbury currently has the only high-school aged girls rugby club in Connecticut.

At first Amity interest in rugby was very limited, but Walsh and Webster kept working to increase interest. Walsh’s son, then a junior at Amity, began talking about rugby to some of his friends. He soon found that classmate Alex Carpenter (who was a highly successful Spartan wrestler) was also an avid rugby player. Word began to spread at AHS and 13 boys became the nucleus of the infant program. By the end of spring, 2010, seven or eight boys were involved. With limited financial resources, Amity High School was not interested in establishing another varsity program. Still, Walsh and Webster would not be deterred. They chose to merge their program with a similar program at Hand High of Madison and play a limited schedule against other scholastic rugby programs around the state.

Nate Gallo was a rugby player living in California who would soon be moving east to be the new Yale women’s rugby coach.  His mother-in-law lives in Orange and learned about the new Amity-Hand rugby club and told Gallo about it. Upon arriving in Connecticut, Gallo contacted the club’s founding fathers and soon became its volunteer coach.

With Gallo’s help, last spring the newly-formed Connecticut Rugby Union organized a state championship tournament at Yale. While Amity rugby program has a competitive aspect, it also attempts to teach fundamental rugby skills to interested but also novice boys. While not a varsity sport at AHS, the rugby program has become an official school club and has math teacher Scott DeMeo as its adviser. Players are required to pay an insurance fee of $20 to the US Rugby Association and pay another $50 for team dues. In order to keep costs down, the players have been seeking sponsors who formerly played and/or have an interest in rugby.

This year, the Amity Rugby Club has 22 players on its roster and has chosen to break away from Madison and have its own team. While not a varsity sport or affiliated with AHS, the team does wear Black and Gold uniforms. Unable to use any high school fields, the rugby team usually practices at the old Center Road School in Woodbridge or the High Plains Community Center Field in Orange.

According to Walsh, “We are looking to the future, trying to build some inertia, and develop a long-term rugby program. Currently, we are attempting to educate people about us and about rugby. We aren’t trying to steal kids from Amity sports teams but some day, we’d love to see our program expand to 50-60 boys like Cheshire. Fairfield Prep has grown so large, it had to make cuts this year for the first time. Greenwich has over 200 players and five rugby teams.”

Walsh explained that rugby is an ideal sport for boys that are not big enough to play football or agile enough to play soccer, hockey, lacrosse, or basketball. He called them “Kids that fell into the cracks of a varsity sports program.”

He added that while not currently a varsity sport, the Amity Rugby Football Club operates as if it were one. It currently plans on playing six or seven 11-player games this spring and then run a seven-person rugby program during the summer.

While aimed at boys from the BOW, Walsh acknowledged that interested players of high school age from any town could join the Amity Rugby Football Club. People interested in finding out more about Amity rugby  can contact DeMeo at Amity High School, call Walsh at 203-397-0243 or check the Amity rugby website amityrugbyfootballclub@gmail.com