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FEATURE
two hands...why?" Renfro asks as a circle is formed for a passing drill. "It's so you can have control of the ball and pass it when you need to."
It has been more than 35 years since Renfro joined the club. Now holding "life member" status, his occasional instruction at practice, the fields he operates and the clubhouse constructed on the top level of the first Johnny's Tavern at 401 N. 2nd St. continue to invite — and often hook — the new and prospective members and keep alive a tradition of rugby on a campus that saw one of the Midwest's first teams fielded.
--each other, but Holland says a friend's parent soon linked him to the club's under-19 team during his sophomore year at Lawrence High School.
Rugby was nonexistent between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains until 1964. That fall George Bunting came to the University to study law after a stint at Dartmouth. An encounter with the sport at the New Hampshire campus compelled Bunting to place an ad in The University Daily Kansan seeking students interested in the sport — an ad later met by 20 volunteers who would fill the roster of the first Kansas club rugby team.
The team began play in the Western Rugby Football Union's Central Division after Gerry Seymour, a British expatriate who founded the Kansas City Rugby Football Club, conceived the league.
Forty-five years since the Kansas club's inception, that 20-member inaugural side has evolved into a 150-person organization with five teams: men's college, men's club, men's Under-19, women's and a side for the more seasoned alumni, or "old boys."
"The sport has gotten a lot more technical and professional," Renfro says. "Back then I would say the third half was more important than the first two halves but now the first two halves are more important. There's more athletes involved."
By "third half" Renfro is referring to the after hours spent socializing at the clubhouse tossing back bottles of beer.
--each other, but Holland says a friend's parent soon linked him to the club's under-19 team during his sophomore year at Lawrence High School.
That's not to say the top floor of Johnny's doesn't grow spirited after games and practices and that there aren't a few empty bottles as casualties. Only through the years, Renfro says the club has moved beyond the perception that it's made up of a bunch of beer-swilling ruffians.
Ask most of the team's players how they began the sport and their responses often mirror one another. Renfro transferred to Kansas after growing uninterested in playing football at Ottawa University, about 30 miles south of Lawrence. Watching a friend play rugby helped hook him.
The college club's president, Brandon Holland, Lawrence junior, also played football in high school before discovering the sport with a group of friends. They began by passing the ball around and tackling
Nick Mancini, Los Angeles senior says he was pulled aside by team representatives at Union Fest two years ago and was persuaded to give the sport a shot.
It stuck and he soon assumed the role of recruiter, coaxing Chris Farley, Leavenworth freshman, to play his first team sport since he was a high school sophomore.
The game's physicality (sans pads) and lengthy list of laws prove a formidable hurdle to clear when beginning the sport.
Farley has had to rebound from two injuries this season, the first a sprained AC joint in his shoulder after he took a knee against Kansas State and the second a pair of sprained wrists against Truman State.
Mancini's positions of prop and lock ask that he be among the team's largest and strongest athletes. Yet it took a mere three practices into his rugby career to find himself dazed on the receiving end of a devastating stiff-arm.
"The first time you get your clock cleaned without pads on is an interesting feeling," Mancini says. "You're either out here to play and hit people or you're getting run over."
"The
"Most people, especially Americans, think we're stupid for playing and that we're just beating each other up," says Conor Taft, Chicago freshman. "It's a lot less barbaric than it seems. It's a thinking game and is very crafty. It's a lot less of a collision game like football."
physicality definitely took a while to get used to," Farley says. "I didn't get used to getting hit that hard until probably the third game."
If drinking and buffoonery have largely comprised the casual observer's perception of rugby in the states, its physical style of play wouldn't fall far behind.
Tanner Grubbs/KANSAN
Tanner Grubbs/KANSAN Rick Renfro, above, rests an elbow on the bar in the Jayhawk Rugby Football club house. Renfro, a life-member of the club and owner of Johnny's Tavern, constructed the clubhouse in the 1980s to serve as a place for the team to meet after practices and games.
The Fall 1978 club, including Rick Renfro on the far right,
pose for a club portrait pictured on the left. Rentro has been a part of the 45-year-old club since he was 18 years old and said he was a player-coach before the team had a head coach.
Mancini traveled with the team to New Zealand last spring in its first overseas tour in more than 12 years.
It's a tradition that Renfro has been a part of since he went on the first tour as an 18-year-old to England.
"We learned a lot and bonded over time," Mancini says. "It was an amazing place to see and to stay in the other players' homes. It was a really cool experience to meet some people with a common bond playing a game."
Upstairs in the clubhouse at Johnny's, Renfro looks at a team picture taken during the South Africa trip. It's one of a wealth of
Continued on page 6
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE WAVE NOVEMBER 6,2009