11:25 a.m., Jan. 19, 2010----The University of Delaware club men's rugby team is in the midst of one of its most successful seasons, having been ranked No. 1 in the nation in December by Rugby Magazine and currently holding a No. 3 ranking.

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UD is among the elite teams in the nation after going unbeaten in the fall, with victories coming against a host of top 25 teams including Pennsylvania State University (ranked No. 8), the U.S. Naval Academy (No. 9) and Kutztown University (No. 11).

The victory at Navy was especially important to head coach Bjorn Haglid. “The Navy game was the crowning game of the season,” he says. “Going down to Annapolis and playing them in their stadium, their team was much larger than ours and we had never beaten them before in a match. Our boys stood up to the challenge and took a bit of their soul away.”

Jack Matthews, president of the rugby club, agrees, saying, “Beating Navy I would say was our greatest achievement this year. It marked the first time that Delaware has beaten Navy. The match was at the Naval Academy and gave us first place in our league, as well as first in the country.”

Success is nothing new to the UD rugby program, which regularly fields competitive teams and whose spring 2007 squad was ranked as high as No. 5 in the nation.

Coach Haglid says that the recent success is due to “the work the players have put in together as a team,” noting “the starting side has put in additional practices, meeting up on Mondays and Fridays besides the usual Monday, Tuesday and Thursday practices. This has increased the bond and the trust among each other, and this is something the players have to achieve and cannot be preached by the coaching staff.”

He also says that the ability to train on the football practice turf at nights after K.C. Keeler's Blue Hens had completed their workouts helped the rugby team stay on top of its game.

Says the coach of the night practice sessions, “I was able to bring in additional coaches because the training was at night, and most people have to work during the day. In the past, this was the only time the rugby team could practice due to lack of having night lights on a field.”

Matthews agrees that the extra practices and night sessions have helped the team achieve such a pristine level of success but adds that this team is “also a very young team that has a lot of experience playing rugby. Every year we get more and more kids that come to Delaware who have played either in high school or with men's teams back home.”

Matthews also says that this year's team's greatest characteristic is its “drive and willpower,” explaining, “in our three biggest matches this year -- Kutztown, Penn State and Navy -- we had been trailing but were able to get late scores that secured victory.”

The rugby team will face a stern challenge as it enters the spring season, opening with a game out in Utah against defending national champion Brigham Young University, a game which Coach Haglid hopes will help the team “find out how we compare and what we need to do before the next round of playoffs that will be held in Wilmington, Del., on the weekend of March 27-28.”

The coach says that the team has to watch out for injuries and overcome the ones that do occur, a problem he says “any coach and team has in preparing for a run at a national championship.”

Matthews says he believes that the team will have a target on its back now that it has accomplished so much and is ranked so high. “The hardest part is that teams will be aiming for us now. We are the top team and everyone will be wanting to take it from us. They will be training hard to beat us and we will have to train even harder in order to remain as the top team,” he says.

Matthews says that his favorite part of rugby is game day, when all the effort the players and coaching staff have put in during the week comes to fruition, lately in the form of victories.

The best part of rugby, to Coach Haglid, is “seeing the smiles and enjoyment from my players.” He hopes to see those smiles widen as the team gears up for a run at the national title.

Article by Adam Thomas