The Oregon club team finished the first-ever Pacific-10 Conference men’s rugby tournament this weekend at UCLA.
The team came away with an eighth-place finish and a record of one tie and four losses.
Oregon tied Arizona 15-15 and surrendered losses to Arizona State 35-22, UCLA 17-10, Stanford 7-5 and tournament runner-up Washington State 21-7.
“The games were all a lot closer,” club coordinator Joey Latteri said. “We just always got down early and managed to battle back. We were the last team to score in every one of our games so we were always on the comeback.”
Oregon was heavily outnumbered by most of the other teams.
Four of the teams are ranked among the top-20 in the nation, including California, which holds the No. 2 ranking and has won 14 of the last 15 national title games.
Being a varsity team while also being a top tier team has its perks for Cal. The Bears have enough members to field four sides, which is about 60 players.
“They’re treated like the UO football team,” Latteri said. “Their starters only played 20 minutes on Saturday and were 100 percent fresh on Sunday.”
The men only had two weeks of practice after winter break heading into the tournament and the team’s roster consists of only 18 members. Three of those 18 players were injured, forcing Oregon to play without any substitutes.
“We were basically playing ironman rugby,” Latteri said. “Everyone was battling through every injury they had.”
Adding insult was the fact that the men’s team had to drive down to reach the tournament when most of the other teams chartered a plane, further increasing the team’s fatigue.
Despite the beating Cal provided the rest of the Pac-10 teams as it won the tournament with a 27-6 victory over Washington State, this event marked the first time a major conference has put together a rugby tournament, an important step in making rugby recognized as a major collegiate sport.
“Rugby has been around in some of these schools since the 1900s,” said Latteri, “and it was really big for rugby to take this step and something UCLA plans on doing every year.”
There is also talk of alternating the event to a different location each year, and Oregon could host the tournament if it is able to secure the use of Pape Field.
The tournament “sets a new standard for rugby here in the United States,” Latteri said. “It’s something we hope to improve upon and get corporate sponsorship and make it a bigger event.”
The tournament was already quite the event in Los Angeles as Latteri claims the bleachers were consistently packed with spectators, and alumni from each school were in the crowd.
Next up for Oregon will be Southern Oregon on Saturday at noon at the Southbank field next to the Autzen footbridge. Next weekend they will travel to Seattle to face Washington. The following weekends will be home games as the men will face Western Washington and Central Washington Feb. 11 and 18, respectively.
The team is always open to new members. Practices are held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Southbank field.