Rugby is a hard sport to grasp. Players play on a field similar to a soccer field and the sports share the non-stop action up and down the field and the absence of equipment like soccer. But players use a football-shaped ball, tackle each other, score in end zones and have goal posts like football.
    "The best way I could explain rugby is that it is an eternal kick return in football," said Dan Knapp, member of the K-State rugby team and junior in mass communications. "It doesn't stop. If you get tackled, you keep going and the kick return keeps going until you get across the goal line."
    The rugby team, like the football team, has played three games this season, including an overtime win last weekend against in-state rival KU. The team is not an official NCAA sport and is partially funded by allocations from the Student Governing Association and fundraisers.
    Hale Sloan, president of the club and senior in pre-dentistry, said almost 30 people are on the team, but since 15 players from each team are on the field at any time, most players see a lot of playing time. This extended playing time can take quite a toll on the players' bodies, especially in such a brutal sport.
    Joe D'Agostino, sophomore in computer science management, said the team has to balance the intensity at practices so players are prepared but don't get injured before games.
    "Obviously every game, every practice, you have a chance to get an injury," D'Agostino said. "Yeah, you definitely want a break at the end of the season."
    Just barely into the season, injuries have already begun to affect the team. In last week's game, one player suffered a concussion and went into seizures after slamming into the ground. Though Knapp said the injury was the worst he had seen in a rugby game, he said the player is recovering well this week. But that player and a few others will not be able to play in this week's match against a tough Nebraska team.
    The K-State club team is coming off a successful season, in which they were ranked in the Division I rugby top 25 — a feat almost unimaginable when Sloan joined the club in 2004.
    "We went from not being able to get enough people to go to games to ranked in the top 25 of Division I rugby last season," Sloan said. "So I think we've progressed pretty well."
    Sloan said most of the players on the team played in high school in metropolitan areas like Kansas City and Denver.
    "The rest are just people like me who grew up playing sports and decided to give it a try when they got to college," Sloan said.
    Knapp, who played for the rugby team at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kan., said the K-State club team is much less organized and structured than his team in high school, but he hopes to change that.
    "We're trying to make this team more regimented," he said. "We're starting to win games, so its time to buckle down and get serious about this."