What do you think? Vote for when 7s and 15s should be played!
Originally posted on the Rugby Northeast blog:
Dear Nigel,
I am writing you directly on behalf of all women’s colleges in the Northeast and Midwest and pockets of teams and unions throughout the country. As you’ll see below, I have copied union executives, college coaches, college Athletic Directors, committee members, et al from around the country who both support and oppose the case you are about to read. This is by no means a complete list, but is merely included for transparency purposes.
We have all heard the compelling arguments for both sides of the seasonality issue – when should we play 7’s and when should we play 15’s? While many arguments are valid and we will never have 100% support one way or another, there is an indisputable, determining factor in the form of Mother Nature herself. The entire Northeast, the entire Midwest, and portions of the Northwest and Mid-Atlantic CANNOT play a full 15’s season in the spring.
It is my understanding that USAR is working with the NCAA to define seasonality for our game and begin developing more varsity status teams around the country. This is a wonderful opportunity for so many student-athletes and college programs and will be a game-changer for all levels of men’s and women’s rugby in the USA! However, should a particular seasonality be set that contrasts with the Mother Nature constraints of our Northern regions, those regions will be faced with an incredible question – will they accept varsity 7’s status in the fall and lose 15’s rugby altogether or will they continue to run fall 15’s with no hope of ever attaining varsity status?
Taking any sort of middle ground stance in which different regions can choose their own seasons to play the respective codes will not work either. It would be very unlikely the NCAA would approve such a plan, and even if they did, the quest to build more varsity teams would fall short when AD’s discovered the complexities of mixing both codes into both seasons. Furthermore, this would cripple the ability for “opposite season” teams to play on “level ground” in national championships.
The fall 7’s argument splits our country in two. It jeopardizes the NCAA initiative by limiting the growth of varsity rugby by excluding all colleges in the snow regions from ever participating in varsity 15’s.
By mandating fall 15’s and spring 7’s, you would be UNITING our collegiate rugby landscape and giving ALL colleges the opportunity to join the NCAA initiative for both codes of the game. This is the ONLY way to give every college in the country the OPPORTUNITY to play varsity rugby (7’s and/or 15’s) and keep their 15’s programs alive.
I find it very disconcerting that USAR has set a standard for a fall 7’s season by administering the 7’s national championships in fall. This has been done at the committee level, but without enough input or objective data from around the country. Two entire regions of the country, nearly 50% of your collegiate membership will have minimal at best opportunity to prepare or qualify for this event. We must act now to change this decision made by a minority and made void of important data into one that considers the greater interests of our entire population.
I, along with the unified support of two regions and many auxiliary supporters around the country, ask you to consider the following options:
A – Unify our college schedule by making a decisive mandate on the seasonality issue. Fall 15’s and Spring 7’s is the only way to give opportunity to all.
OR
B – Slow down the effort to define seasonality in the NCAA initiative until you have a better understanding of how it could devastate the Northern United States and cap the growth of varsity rugby at less than half of its potential.
Thank you for your consideration and work on this matter.
Yours truly,
Austin Hall
Head Coach
Varsity Women’s Rugby
Norwich University
802-485-2921 (office)
802-595-1346 (mobile)
What do you think? Vote for when 7s and 15s should be played!
I’ve long felt that 7s should be an indoor game for the universities and played in the winter. Why not use all the college football fieldhouses and indoor soccer/lacrosse/multipurpose fields for rugby?
The issue of fall vs. spring is incredibly tough as schools on trimesters like Northwestern, where I played undergrad and coached for several years, don’t start until late, late September. For 2 years we had to compete in Big Ten championships before school started and took a ragtag team (players were not back on campus yet so had to use whomever was local enough to travel) without any 15s practices to compete against schools like Michigan State and Penn State that had been in session for several weeks. We made it work, but a November championship would have produced far better rugby (but would have conflicted with D2 and D1 playoffs, no easy solution there). If Big Tens were in the spring it would have conflicted with nationals, select side tournaments and also the fact that Michigan ends classes in late April (NU ends in mid-June).
If you put the emphasis on 7s for either spring or fall you lose the chance to develop rookie players for either season… as an example the majority of my underclassmen wouldn’t see playing time in the fall as we had a full roster close to 40 in size but very few B-side games; each game was a must-win for league play and playoff consideration. Play 7s in spring and that means my rookie prop gets maybe 20 minutes of playing time in the fall and then I may lose him from playing at all because what do we do with those 15s forwards in a 7s season?
Also then what happens to the all star tournaments and selection venues, player camps and whatnot?
Unfortunately yes, lots of decisions are made like this. Another example is the creation of the whole conference structure for colleges last year. A committee made the decision, and that was that. Many people agreed with the decision, some did not. And last week, the latest directive said that Women’s colleges had to be out of the Local Unions and form their own conferences within three years…if a team wished to remain within a local union, well, too bad.