Denim Millward
Sports Editor
With the retirement of longtime coach and player Ransom Eddings, the Idaho State University men’s rugby team faced a daunting task: continue piling up wins and dominating competition as it had under the Eddings regime.
Though the loss of the longtime ISU rugby figurehead was a huge one, the Bengals have managed another resoundingly successful season, with minimal hiccups along the way.
Despite a four-match slide in early spring, the rugby team has put together an 11-4 record thus far in the season.
The string of wins is punctuated with performances along the way, such as an 83-5 drubbing of Boise State on October 12 and a 52-0 shutout of San Diego State on January 24 in the Las Vegas Invitational tournament.
Two of the four losses for the squad have been by fewer than 10 points.
Those losses include a hard-fought 15-22 defeat at the hands of Snake River Rugby and a narrow 24-27 loss to Weber State, whom the Bengals had defeated earlier in the season 73-29.
Their most recent loss on March 15 was to the Brigham Young University rugby team.
BYU’s rugby team is the Division I Varsity Cup defending champion, as well as one of the premier collegiate squads in the nation.
The Bengals are preparing to reap the fruits of their labor this season when they head to Pullman, Wash., to square off against the Washington State Cougars in the DI-AA Varsity Cup Tournament on April 19.
Their stellar performance thus far has earned the Bengals the number one seed in the North Bracket of the Varsity Cup, a tournament held annually at the end of the season to crown the best rugby squad west of Denver.
The foreign cousin to American football, rugby’s popularity is certainly not as high in the United States as it is overseas.
However, played without pads or helmets, it can be as, if not more, punishing and brutal as an NCAA or NFL game, only without nearly as much glory and fame involved.
The popularity of the sport in other countries can clearly be seen in the ISU rugby roster, where a quick perusal shows quite possibly the most regionally and ethnically diverse athletic team in all of Idaho State athletics on both the collegiate and club levels.
Four continents and seven different countries are represented on the Idaho State rugby squad.
Even the players who are American come from 11 different states.
Gaspar Fournel hails from Beynes, France, while Pablo Garcia-Celis is native to Mexico City.
Neveij Walters, a Kingston, Jamaica, native who formerly played basketball at Idaho State, plays the same position as Jerome Fayette-Compton, whose Wasilla, Alaska, hometown is as different from Walters’ as can be.
Despite the heavy presence of imported talent, the squad is represented well by local talent.
This includes Jordan Peterson, a Highland High School graduate, Pocatello native Casey Axelson, and Jonathan Boyd, who went to high school just down the road in Marsh Valley.
