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Rugby is experiencing an American boom, and nowhere more so than at the 80-plus Jesuit high schools and colleges coast to coast.
It’s probably not too surprising that a Catholic order conceived in the aftermath of battle, one which has always seasoned its intellectual and spiritual fervour with a healthy respect for physical strength, has become the principal force behind the growth of American rugby.
“The whole idea of what Ignatius inspired in Jesuits, a competitive spirit and the development of the whole person, is really alive in the sport,” said the Rev. Bruce Bidinger, a Jesuit counselor at St. Joseph’s University and the chaplain for that school’s basketball team.
While Boston College will be the only Jesuit school competing at this weekend’s 2011 USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship in Chester’s PPL Park, the rosters of the 15 other teams will be teeming with Jesuit high school products.
In a recent Rugby Magazine poll of the nation’s best high school rugby teams, five of the top 10 – and seven of the top 17 – were from Jesuit institutions in Sacramento, New York City, Dallas, New Orleans, and Washington.
Though Gonzaga of Washington was the top-rated team for much of 2011, this year’s high school championship was won by Jesuit High of Sacramento over Xavier of New York, the latter a Jesuit school in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbuorhood.
The Sacramento school has long been the primary feeder for the dynastic rugby program at Cal, which has won 26 national collegiate rugby titles and who have seven players in the U.S. national team.
Jesuits, whose guiding philosophy about the union of body and spirit is the Catholic counterpart to the Protestant notion of “muscular Christianity,” have long advocated for sports.
“Those [Jesuit] schools produce smart, tough players who are also good students,” said Alex Goff, the editor of Rugby Magazine.
While the process of adding another sport in American public schools could be bureaucratically challenging, Catholic institutions are able to establish teams quickly, and in the process, attract new students.
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