History of rugby union in the United States
The varsity track and football squads monopolize the field to such an extent that the early hours of the morning are the only ones during which the rugby enthusiasts can play.
Any time except Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a squad of 25 men may be seen running through the hardest kind of practice after which they may divide into two teams and play a hard game.
Once a week, captain CC Walton, ('11), dental, who hails from New Zealand, gives the enthusiastic players a blackboard talk in which he explains the intricacies of the game in detail.
[12] Rugby union was again included in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, where the United States defeated France for the gold.
The present Princeton Rugby team was reorganized in 1931 under the leadership of Monte Barak, Hugh Sloan, H.F. Langenberg, and coach John Boardman Whitton and has been playing continuously ever since.
On 31 January 1976, the U.S. national team played Australia—in its first official match since the 1924 Olympics—before 7,000 fans at Glover Field in Los Angeles.
However, we know that in 1610, William Strachey, an English colonist at Jamestown, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called Pahsaheman, so it is clear that they had their own codes as well.
They remained largely "mob" style games, with huge numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary.
Primitive forms of rugby, then all covered by the name "football", were being played in the US as far back as the 1840s, at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, stemming partly from Americans who had been educated in English schools.
[27] However, in 1862, Yale dealt it a major blow by banning it for being too violent and dangerous, about seven years later, in 1869, the first game of rugby football was played between Princeton and Rutgers.
[27] However, because of America's huge size, this resulted in a bipolar game, played mainly in east and west, but not really in the middle – other than Illinois and the Great Lakes, and Texas in the south.
[27] There would also come to be a small rugby-playing centre in Salt Lake City, as Polynesian Mormons came to study and live there, and to a lesser extent by returning missionaries.
In 1875, Harvard athlete Nathaniel Curtis challenged Yale's captain, William Arnold to a rugby-style game.
[34] In 1876, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, a competition based on the traditional rules of rugby union.
This extended into the sporting arena, with the adoption and invention of American football, basketball, and volleyball, and also the myth of Abner Doubleday founding baseball, which attempted to divorce it from its English origins.
[12][27] Apart from the high standard of rugby in various parts of Canada, it was not uncommon for Australian and New Zealand sides to play games in the US – especially California and New York – when returning from Europe, or when European teams made the trip the other way.
The underdog American side upset both Rotorua RFC and Auckland RU,[citation needed] which came as a great surprise to the international rugby community.
[7] The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "America has arrived on the international map" and predicted that the U.S. "will be looking down upon all the other nations in a few more years.
"[7] After a promising start on the international stage, the Americans were thrashed 51–3 a year later by a strong All Blacks side in their tour on North America.
This test was organized by former Cal president Benjamin Ide Wheeler in an attempt to popularize rugby among his students.
][27] Hawaii and Alaska led completely separate rugby existences, focusing their energy on their South Seas, and British Columbian neighbors instead.
Rugby union was a fixture at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, and a United States team composed largely of players from Stanford University and coached by Dan Carroll defeated France to win the gold medal, after money was raised in San Francisco to send them to Europe.
An American side was invited to participate, and the team surprised spectators by landing a place in the final with the hosts – the French.
The timing was unfortunate, and the RFL was unable to send out a delegation due to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
However, during the war itself, American servicemen stationed abroad occasionally played matches against teams from other allied sides – these included those from the British, Australian and South African militaries.
Dimitrio did persist though, by holding exhibition games by the Australian and New Zealand rugby league teams, again in California.
Rugby began getting some coverage in the media, including in the New York Times, when 1958 Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins played for Oxford against Cambridge in 1959.
On 31 January 1976, the U.S. national team played Australia—in its first official match since the 1924 Olympics—before 7,000 fans at Glover Field in Los Angeles.
In 2014, the United States hosted the New Zealand national team before a record sellout crowd of 60,000+ at Soldier Field in Chicago, a match later billed as potentially marking the rise of American rugby.
[40] In 2016, PRO Rugby established the first fully professional Rugby competition in the U.S. Also in that year, the English top-flight club London Irish took a home match against Saracens to the Red Bull Arena in the New York area, marking the first top-flight English match ever held outside that country.
