In a time where the WSU football team has fallen from the view of the national audience, one WSU football squad is receiving national recognition for their performance.
With Head Coach Paul Wulff leading the football team that is growing in talent, another team is looking to gain more recognition in the following few years: rugby as a sport looking to gain much national attention.
“Rugby has been exponentially getting more and more popular among college students and sports fans in general,” WSU rugby captain Cameron Soller said. “WSU rugby has always had a reputation for running hard and hitting big and now we will get a chance to display that talent on a national level.”
WSU rugby recently participated in an invitational rugby sevens tournament with a fairly inexperienced squad, traveling with mostly freshman. However, the Cougars played with a strong and determined to show the attending crowd what WSU rugby was all about. Coming out a little banged up the Cougars finished with a few victories including a close match against rivals UW.
Participating in the invitational was a big step in WSU rugby receiving possible nation wide television coverage.
“I was really excited when we received the invitation to the tournament," WSU rugby Head Coach Matt Hudson said. “The staff responsible for putting on the event had said that there was a very good chance that if the tournament went well this year then it would be televised next year, which it did and it most likely will.”
Playing against many PAC-10 opponents during their division one schedule, WSU rugby looks to climb the ranks this semester starting off their season ranked 21 in the nation.
In order to keep the team in shape for the newly revised one semester schedule, head coach Matt Hudson signed the cougs up for a division two schedule against teams like ranked Eastern Washington University and Gonzaga University. The Cougars won all of their matches except for a close match against University of Montana.
“The WSU Cougars have a very strong program this year as they have had in the past,” writer for Rugby Magazine Joshua Young said. “Despite graduating some key players, they handily defeated all of their opponents this fall, it may have been division two but there are still some good teams in that division.”
Despite being ranked in the past, WSU rugby has been unable to travel for playoffs in past years. The Cougars qualified for playoffs and a chance at the national title 4 out of the last 5 years but were unable to attend.
The WSU women’s rugby team has also had a good amount of success in recent years. Building a strong program the women’s team won a division two national title last year. Further influencing them to bump up their competition to competing in a division one schedule.
Whit the men’s rugby team starting the year ranked in the top 25, the playoffs seem imminent.
Hudson said, “We have had a lot of help this year in terms of funding from our alumni and the chili cook-off we put on this year both helped raise lots of money for the team. Needless to say we are pumped.”
Sources:
Matt Hudson:
(253) 376-5734
Cameron Soller
(253) 606-6333
Joshua Young
(253) 740-7857
Background:
I was talking with some of my friends trying to figure out what I should write about for this final article and one of them suggested I speak to his uncle who used to be a journalist for a local newspaper over in Bellingham. I contacted Nick Wyatt and quickly realized his skills in evaluating newsworthy topics and in journalism in general. I had some thoughts I shared with him for a story idea. I wanted to write about why Seattle is always under fire when it comes to their efficiency in snow control whereas Pullman never seems to have an issue. We quickly waved off that idea and determined that it was more of an answer that if someone wanted to know they could hop onto google and find out. I also wanted to write about the possibility of the Sonics returning to Seattle but also disregarded that story idea discussing that it would be more of a conspiracy story than a news article. He suggested writing about the Wikileaks guy but I told him that we had done a segment on it in class and didn’t know if that would show much creativity on my part. I told him about how our rugby team has been ranked and we joked about our football team and stumbled upon this story.
