Pepperdine men’s rugby started their spring season on Saturday, with a match against UC Riverside. Founded in 1955, the rugby team is one of the oldest club sports on campus. The match was played on the muddy and uneven Alumni field and ended in a loss.
Collegiate rugby is year-long — it has both fall and spring seasons — but the fall season is an unofficial preseason for the formal spring season, which leads to the regional and national playoffs in April.
“The team will do very well this year,” Coach Robert Ahola said. “We’ve been playing against larger colleges, such as USC Irvine — schools with 20 to 30 thousand students — and now we’re playing in a new division against smaller colleges of our size, so that’s exciting.”
Ahola is the pro bono coach for Pepperdine rugby, meaning he coaches voluntarily. Having played rugby for almost three decades, he enjoys coaching the Pepperdine men and seeing them work together.
“Pepperdine’s always been great at rugby; we usually make the playoffs, and I think we will again this year,” Ahola said.
Not only is Pepperdine’s rugby team unique because it is a very competitive and historic sport, but more than 10 percent of the players are military veterans. Of the 25-player team, the veterans include Peter Creech of the U.S. Coast Guard, Eric Brown of the U.S. Marine Corps Infantry and Joel Denning of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Wing.
“Our veterans are bringing a lot of maturity and leadership to the team,” Ahola said. “They’ve been in real combat, so this is definitely playtime for them.”
Denning, a 23-year-old first-year student at Seaver College, started at Pepperdine this fall after serving for five years. Like most Pepperdine rugby players, he played football in high school and discovered rugby upon arrival at Pepperdine.
“Being a member of the team is a great experience,” Denning said. “I think being a military veteran gives … [us] a very unique set of perspectives on things that hopefully make the club that much better.”
In addition to the players on the team who are military veterans, Coach Ahola also served in the Marine Reserve.
“It is really cool to be surrounded by individuals who can relate to the military background, and the students who haven’t had our experiences have welcomed us all, which has been great,” Denning said.
The rugby team has a whole season of matches ahead of them, including more home matches at Alumni Green, so check their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ WavesRugby) to stay up-to-date with upcoming games and this season’s results.
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Follow Marissa Baly on Twitter: @marissabaylay
