As the final whistle pierced the air, Griffin Marsans fell to his knees.
There for a few seconds, on the grass where all semester long he had spilled blood, sweat and tears preparing and practicing for each slobber-knocking physical battle, he reflected on this very moment as others around him cheered.
“I think I shed a couple of tears,” he said days later, thinking back to the Radford University Rugby Club’s impressive victory in the conference semifinal game on campus. “It was one of the best feelings ever. It feels like I’m on top of the world.”
Soon, Marsans joined his teammates and a group of boisterous fans there at the team’s Fallen Brothers Field between the Dedmon Center and the New River.
The Highlanders – donning green jerseys with a diagonal tartan print, white shorts and red socks – had just defeated College of Charleston, 27-19, in the Southern Rugby Conference semifinals on a scenic Saturday afternoon, Nov. 1, in front of a raucous gathering of supporters that included family, friends and an enthusiastic group of Radford students. In the crowd, too, were Radford President Bret Danilowicz and First Lady Kay Danilowicz.
“The crowd was so loud out there,” said Marsans, who plays flyback, which is similar to quarterback in football.
“There were times,” he continued with an appreciative smile, “when I was struggling to call plays out there because it was so loud.”
The semifinal game was the first playoff contest Radford has hosted in more than 10 years, a big deal for Christian Plaster, a senior loose head prop – that’s the position he plays on the team.
The team began preparing a week earlier for what was then the biggest game of their Radford club-rugby-playing careers. They extended practices from two to three hours, and “we were just locked in,” recalled Marsans, a junior business management major from Lorton, Virginia. “It was cold, calm and ready.”
On Friday, the day before the match, Marsans, the team captain, carefully lined and prepared the field, just as he does before every home match. The morning before the game, he continued another personal tradition of watching a video recap of Radford rugby’s 2008 national championship season. “It gets me pumped,” he said. “It gets me in the mindset of I’m not just doing this for me, I’m doing it for the Radford club.”
Hours later, the calm confidence remained with Marsans, Plaster and the entire team leading up to the 3 p.m. start time.
“I was really calm, and I just knew that if we played our game that we were going to beat them, and that’s exactly what happened,” said Plaster, a senior interdisciplinary studies major from Richlands, Virginia, whose father, Radford alumnus Chris Plaster ’96, coaches the team. “When the game ended, it was probably one of the happiest days of my life because I got to be with my family and friends afterward, and that was great because we all accomplished something incredibly massive. It was one of the best days of my life.”
A week later, Radford lost the conference championship to Christendom College in a match played in Elon, North Carolina.
Overall, however, Radford rugby played out a successful season that made the university community proud. It wasn’t just the winning that made it great, but also the support the team received throughout the season, they said.
“The crowds at our games have been great, and they’ve grown since last year,” Marsans said. "And being part of a university that supports us and gives us funds and gives us an opportunity to continue to grow the sport at Radford is just amazing to me. We have so much support and help.”
The support is important, Plaster chimed in, “that Radford gives us this opportunity, and it shows how important it is to students to have club sports. We are able to compete at a high level.”
Sometimes competing at those high levels presents challenging circumstances, like the time this season when the team traveled to the University of Virginia with 15 players – just enough players to compete. “We were warming up and looked over and saw them [UVa] with about 50 guys,” Marsans recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, no. Here we go.’”
The team that relishes the David-versus-Goliath role truly basked in their underdog status that day.
“We go into the match, and they have about triple the amount of players we have – and you feel like everyone is expecting us to lose. But we came out on top, and it was a decent score,” Marsan said modestly and nonchalantly. “We beat them 71-12.”
Radford club rugby boasts a rich tradition, having won national championships in 2003 and 2008. It’s part of a vast offering of club sports at the university. Collectively, more than 450 students compete on Radford club sports teams each year. The university established the Club Sports Federation this fall to support elevated club sports that align with Radford’s
strategic initiatives. In addition to men’s rugby, the federation includes men’s skeet and trap, cheer, pickleball and women’s flag football.
Radford’s Sports Club Council represents additional club sports such as softball, swimming, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s volleyball, tennis and Ultimate Frisbee.
“We’re just happy to be able to compete at this level,” said Plaster, who’s been around rugby since he was a child. “It’s great that Radford offers these club sports opportunities for students who want to continue playing competitive sports in college.”
His father, Coach Plaster, agreed, saying club sports at Radford gives students “something to work together on as a team and achieve things together. You may not be the type of athlete that can participate in NCAA Division I athletics, but club sports allows you to still be part of a team and achieve something and be part of something bigger than yourself.”
Coach Plaster, the commonwealth’s attorney for Tazewell County, said he knows “for a fact that the culture within Radford rugby and the time they’ve spent together and the things they’ve worked together to achieve, it will make them brothers for life. There is zero question about that.”