Rugby: Extreme sport or not?

In an international sense, rugby seems the furthest thing from an extreme sport. While the newer sports mostly began in the United States and on the Pacific Rim and cast with a rebel’s edge, rugby started in England’s prestigious boarding schools in the 1800s.

Rugby emphasizes teamwork over extreme sports’ individualism. The most popular form of the sport, Rugby Union Football, remained amateur until 1995. In sports like surfing, snowboarding, BMXing and skateboarding professionalism occurred earlier.

And yet to many Americans, the violence, athleticism and attitude of rugby makes it a classical, but not prototype, extreme sport.

“I think it’s pretty extreme, I like it,” said Kennedy Garber the president, co-captain and scrumhalf of the Clam Diggers, UNCW’s club rugby squad. “It’s different from what you’re used to. It’s different than a sport grow up in high school. You don’t grow up playing it; you encounter it in college.”

Rugby is an ancestor of American football. In most forms, the sport features 15 men on each side and the object is to get an oval ball in the endzone for a try, which is analogous to a touchdown. Teams can also score by kicking the ball through goalposts for three points.

With its intricate lateral passing (no forward passes allowed) and complex strategy, the sport can be described as elegant.

But most Americans focus on scrums, two wedges of players pushing and kicking over the ball or rooking, a smaller conflict over the ball similar to the scrum.

Rugby players say scrums, rooks and even mauls are complex, thought out maneuvers. But many people see them as just plain violent.

In fact, it’s both.

“Every attack is a planned attack. If you carry out the attack an hold onto the ball, you’re going be successful,” Clamdiggers’ John Heatley said. “Hitting’s still a part of the game. It’s part of your defense, but what makes the game is the offense.”

Rugby boasts crunching tackles, quite a bit of athleticism and moments that, for the uninitiated fan, wow people.

But to return to the original topic, is it an extreme sport?

“When people find out you play rugby, they think you’re crazy,” Heatley said. “When I think of extreme sports, I think of skiing and stuff like that. Rugby is thinking football.”

“In the classic sense it’s not extreme but in the sense of sports it’s extreme,” Garber said. “It’s football without pads.”

The answer seems nuanced, but one can make a decision when the club plays its games at the Gazebo Field.