Men’s rugby team barreling toward title

By the end of a rugby season, everything hurts. It’s a supremely physical sport in which sprained ankles, jammed fingers and bruises just about everywhere are the norm. But by the end of this weekend, members of the TU men’s rugby club could be feeling nothing but the euphoria of being champions.

The team takes the pitch at 4 p.m. in Houston (5 p.m. EST) Friday in what’s essentially National Collegiate Rugby’s Division II Final Four. With a win over Northern Iowa and then a victory in Sunday’s final, the Tigers would win their first national championship.

“We’ve fought so hard for many years, and we've made it to the final four several times. But that additional hurdle, we've just never been able to do that,” says coach Tony Maranto ’14. “The national championship would truly be a turning of the page of Towson being taken seriously in the rugby community.”

In 1975 Craig Dobkin, a staff member at then-Towson State and a rugby player for the Baltimore Rugby Football Club, and others placed an advertisement in The Towerlight looking for rugby players. About 20 students showed up for the first meeting in Burdick Hall, and the Towson University Rugby Football Club was born.

Invented about two centuries ago, rugby is a rough and tumble sport that’s often compared to American football. While the rules are different, tackling is a bedrock of both. In rugby, however, the players don’t wear pads. While this does result in some violent collisions, there are generally less serious injuries and concussions because players can’t use equipment like helmets as weapons.

“It's a fascinating game because there's just so many different layers to it,” says Maranto, who earned a degree in business administration. He works in IT for Kaiser Permanente and has coached TU since 2021. “It's strategic, it's brutal, it's heavily physical, but it's also a finesse game. It's a little bit of everything.”

TU’s path to success started in the summer, when Maranto implemented a tough conditioning program. In true rugby form, his players embraced the challenge.

“We did this competition where our coach pitted the forwards against the backs,” says Sean Cornell ’27, a sport management major and president of the club. “How many lifts you did, how many runs you got in equaled certain points. Me and this one guy were tied for first. We would text each other each day: ‘I'm going to lift for two hours now just to beat you.’ We're always doing those little things to push each other to be better. It sounds cliche, but our brotherhood is our strength.”

The team has a record of 7-2, but Maranto believes it was one of the two losses, not the seven wins, that has been the key to the season. A close defeat in October against rival Salisbury University revealed to captain Henry Soken, All-American Zach Uhler and the rest of the team exactly where it needed to improve.

“We played tough, but the biggest takeaway from that game was we just didn't play to our potential,” Maranto says. “And we only lost by seven points. That to me was the awakening of, ‘Okay, there is potential [for a title] here.’”

TU earned its spot in the national semifinals by defeating Loyola University Chicago and then Grand Valley State in the regionals in Knoxville, Tennessee. When the team takes the pitch at SaberCats Stadium, home of Houston’s Major League Rugby club, it will have a chance to make history.

“For our alumni, our fans, our family, winning would be amazing,” Cornell says. “We're playing for everyone who came before us and everyone who's coming after us.”

For information on how to watch the games live, visit www.ncr.rugby.