UNL club rugby heading to nationals for third straight year

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Rugby is one of several club sport offerings at UNL.

Next week, the team will head to nationals to compete for a title for the third straight year.

“We’ve had great numbers and just really solid buy-in since the start” of the year, captain Zach Thies said. “We opened with a scrimmage against some local teams and performed really well.”

The club has had some solid success since starting back up following a suspension in 2012. Then-player and now-assistant coach Zak Courtney helped kick-start the program.

“We’ve really been able to get kind of a grassroots understanding of how these guys perform, and what they want to do and what positions they excel at,” Courtney said. “We’ve really taken the club to a completely different level.”

Courtney said the team is composed of a combination of former football players and athletes looking to continue to stay active and compete.

“It definitely gives them a different avenue to hone their skills for football if they want to go back to football,” he said. “But the mission that we created here has got these guys to stay.”

That mission: to go to nationals every year.

Thies said the team is looking to build off a third-place finish at nationals last season.

“We fought really strong all the way to the quarterfinal match against San Diego, which ended up going on to win the whole thing,” he said. “So it was definitely a tough loss, but we probably gave them the best competition that they played all tournament.”

The club plays in the Heart of America Conference of American collegiate rugby. Teams in the conference include Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Minnesota and Missouri.

Like other club sports, there is a small fee to play rugby at Nebraska, but once the program earns varsity status, it can begin recruiting and offering full-ride scholarships.

“The way that the scholarships are driven right now aren’t exactly at that level yet,” Courtney said. “We need to probably get a little bit more funding to actually have an outsourced scholarship where we can recruit a player that’s from maybe overseas or somewhere else. But our focus right now is actually grassroots-led Nebraska, homegrown rugby.”

The club does currently offer two scholarships, including the Jim Cunningham scholarship, named after a former player who died in 2022.

The team does receive funding from the UNL rugby alumni but mostly relies on jersey sponsorships and fundraisers.

Club sports like rugby is give college athletes a second chance at accomplishing their collegiate dreams.

“After my five years of being a part of this, it’s honestly changed my life and my life plans,” Thies said. “If in high school, or as a college freshman, you were telling me that I was going to be a high-level rugby athlete continuing to play after college, I would have told you you’re crazy.”

The club will head to San Jose, California, for nationals on May 20.

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