After six months of off-season training, the rugby team returned to the field this spring with a fierce determination that quad-captain Matt Cozzi ‘14 describes only as “second to none.”

Despite being a sport that may receive less student attention when compared to its spring-counterparts like baseball or lacrosse, a brief sit-down with the team or any of its 45 members will tell you that the Staples rugby team is vastly underrated.

Rugby coach and Spanish teacher Joseph Barahona, who has played rugby for 20 years and coached for an additional six years, saw the positive effects of the team’s hard work firsthand. “I feel that the boys had more at stake in the games [this season] because of all of the hard work they have done throughout the year. They had a harder time giving up and battled to the end,” Barahona said.

“I really think [rugby] is a combo of every sport. You need to be strong but fit. You need to be able to catch, pass, and kick. And you also need to be able to run and tackle,” Cozzi said.

This year, they improved in each of the many areas that must be mastered by a rugby team and have already improved their statistics tremendously.

Last season, the team only won one scrimmage and came in last in the state’s Division 1.This year, the team is five games and two scrimmages in and has only lost once. Additionally, they have worked their way into the top 5 of the state’s Division 1.

With the bitter taste of last season still in their mouths, they went into the 2013 season ready to win. “We worked very hard in the offseason and took care of the small things, then everything just started clicking and before we knew it, we were top 5 in the state in Division 1,” said Yang.

This year, in keeping with the team’s new reputation, they took Fairfield Prep on in a “close, intense battle.”

According to Yang, the team was up 19-12 going into the second half. “Some calls didn’t go our way and we ultimately lost 24-19,” Yang said, in a tone surprisingly devoid of regret. “That was the closest we’ve come to beating them in program history,” he added.
The team’s improvements may come as a surprise to the general population, but the team itself knows better.

Quad captain Umberto Pucci ‘14 said, “We knew that we were going to do well this season, but we didn’t let that get to our heads.” The mindset is simple. “We take the season one week at a time and just try to go 1-0 every week, focus on each team individually rather than taking the season on as a whole,” he said.

Barahona calls this the “ELM tree style of coaching,” his newly adopted strategy which focuses on “Effort, Learning, and Making mistakes.”

“I encourage players to make mistakes and not to be afraid to try something just for fear of making a mistake as long as they were willing to learn from it,” Barahona said. The team puts this into action by going over mistakes after every game and working to correct them.

The ability to learn from mistakes, comes from the strong sense of camaraderie on the rugby team. “[Rugby] is a universal fraternity/brotherhood,” Barahona said. The seasoned rugby player claims that “you can go virtually any place in the world and have a place to stay if you hook up with the local rugby team.”

Pucci agreed, stating, “The difference between rugby and other sports is that no sport has a network of fans/players like rugby does. Being a rugby player (not to sound cheesy) really brings you into a sort of loose family.”

Perhaps a more clear-cut example of this inter-sport culture comes from the traditional post-game meal. “In other sports, the teams will ignore each other once the game is over, and in rugby, the teams actually sit down and have a meal together,” quad-captain Brian Book ‘14, who is also a member of the football team, said.

This tradition goes all the way up to the men’s club level, and oftentimes transforms into participation in community service or other bonding activities.

The Staples’ rugby team has worked hard to get to where they are. But it’s not all about the rankings. The team has bigger goals. “We’re more worried about what we do on the field,” Book said.