Easley High Rugby Club Plays Second Home Match Friday

It’s not an official high school sport, but rugby enthusiasts are hoping that will change in the next five to 10 years.

The sport is growing in the south and is even going to be played in the next Olympics, but to many in Easley the sport is still fairly new.

Jason Gonzalez, a tenth-grade student at , is still trying to learn the game. A baseball player for the last six years, Gonzalez turned to rugby this year.

“It looked like a really interesting sport and it’s fun,” Gonzalez said. “I’m just not used to getting hit every time I touch the ball.”

Darin Wukits serves as the assistant coach for the Easley High School Rugby Club. Wukits fell in love with the sport, working his way up through league play, before earning a spot on the Greenville Griffins.

Now, he said  “the kids are getting older,” and so he decided to coach.

Dr. Tom Ladle, who played professionally for USA Eagles Rugby, serves as the head coach.

Together, Liddle and Wukits are trying to help athletes learn the sport of rugby and it’s not as easy as one might think.

“They’re green,” said Wukits. “Not just because they are students at Easley, but because most of these guys have never seen a rugby match much less played the game. But they’re athletes, so most pick up pretty quickly.”

The Easley team formed in 2009, but oddly enough the team will play only its second home game at the pitch on Pope Field on March 23.

Greer meets Greenville in the 7 p.m. match, followed by Brookland-Cayce at Easley at 8:15 p.m.

The Green Wave is among 16 high school teams across the state. But it’s not the only one in the Upstate, Greer High School has a team and Greenville High has two teams. The sport must have 18 to be sanctioned by the South Carolina High School League, according to Wukits.

“It’s growing, we have 24 kids rostered this year and that’s more than we’ve ever had,” Wukits said. “There’s talk of a couple of teams forming in Spartanburg next year. It would be good for the sport.”

For now, the team plays most of its games in Greenville at Furman University or travels to the midlands, usually on Friday nights.

But how is the game played?

Each team is allowed 15 players on the field at a time. They can have up to seven substitutes during the hour-long game. The 15 positions are broken into 8 forwards, 2 halfbacks, 2 centers, 2 wings and 1 fullback.

The oval-shaped ball is nearly twice the size of a football.

The game itself is divided into two 30-minute halves, with the clock stopping only for injuries on the field.

 “You have to be smart about substituting players,” Wukits said. “Once they leave the field, they are done.

The teams wear no pads or protective gear, but the players said once they started to understand the game, they didn’t worry so much.

Stephen Henry, or Rooster as he is called on the field, said after a wrestling injury he needed a new sport.

“I used to wrestle, but I slipped a vertebrae and had a muscle tear,” Henry said. “I got bored because I didn’t have a sport and so I decided to try this.”

Henry said at first he was a little scared at the idea of playing the sport, but then he realized how much fun it was.

“I talked about four of these guys out here into doing this,” Henry said. “They loved it too. Most people are like rugby… ‘you don’t wear pads,’ but once you get past that, it’s a great sport.”

Wukits said the only things needed to play the sport are a pair of cleats, the will and the heart.

“It’s a pretty gentlemanly game,” Wukits said. “It’s encouraged to shake hands with the opposing team and even have dinner together after the match.”

The team earns points by scoring a try, which similar to a touchdown, is the ball touching the ground, awarding the team five points. A conversion, similar to the extra point kicked in football, will earn two points.

“When a try is scored, the ball is kicked back to you, again,” Wukits

The players move the ball diagonally across the field in an effort to move closer to scoring positions.

The biggest part of the game is maintaining possession of the ball. The other team has to play a good defense to take possession. That can happen if a team member throws the ball forward. The ball can be kicked forward, but never thrown.

A scrum occurs after a penalty, when the player who was the victim of the penalty rolls the ball into a human circle that fights to move the ball out of the scrum and into scoring position.

Wukits said it’s a game one must see to truly understand.