Colorado Mesa University’s club sports program is fortunate to have structure and capable coaches, particularly the men and women’s rugby teams.
Former player and coach, Mack Lewis, works with the teams all year long to ensure that the athletes meet their full potential, on and off the field. During the spring, both the men’s and women’s teams are given the opportunity to play sevens rugby, a faster-paced style of the game, with less than half the players on the field.
“There isn’t really a set schedule,” Head coach Mack Lewis said. “It’s kind of pick-and-go-to the tournaments you want to go to and then there is a National Qualifier. It makes life super difficult because so many teams are flaky,” Lewis said.
On Sunday April 8, the men’s rugby team traveled to Colorado Springs to play in a tournament, hosted by Colorado College, against seven other teams. However, teams like Regis, UCCS, and Western State backed out at the last minute due to unknown reasons.
“This past weekend there were supposed to be seven teams and only four ended up coming, and of those four only three had legit numbers to play,” Lewis said.
The Mavericks ended up taking first place out of the four teams in the tournament by going 4-1 during the day. The disappointing portion of the tournament was that the Mavericks had to play each team twice. If the other schools showed up, the schools who played could’ve seen a better variety of competition.
“Other teams don’t have the organization, coaching staff and support we do it makes it difficult for them to respond or do what they say,” Coach Lewis said. “[A lot] of the time it’s a captain corresponding with coaches or what not.”
CMU has a very solid club sports program, and teams are expected to treat each sport with the stature of that of a varsity sport, which includes sticking to a set schedule and showing up to games, with an adequate number of players. Oftentimes, other schools do not have the support nor allotted funding to build a concrete program, along with motivated coaches.
Team captain, Zo Bryum, was one of the nine players that traveled to Colorado Springs for the tournament. The team originally had 14, but due to injury, were down 5 players from the beginning of the semester.
“At first, we were a bit disappointed that our number of games diminished by teams not following through,” Byrum said. “Teams don’t get punished for a no-show, but it is frustrating for other teams that are attending the tournament.”
CMU was supposed to travel to UNC-Greeley this past weekend to compete against several other schools in the same tournament fashion. However, a couple days before Coach Lewis had to cancel the trip due to the fact only two other teams confirmed they would be showing up at Greeley.
The drive there and back would have been another 12-hour driving day for Lewis and her team to play only two 14-minute rugby matches.
Also, on April 21, Utah State was supposed to host a tournament in Logan, UT. But that tournament ended up being canceled as well.
The positive outlook is that CMU will finally have a chance to compete again when the men travel back down to Colorado Springs to compete at the Air Force Academy on April 29 in the NCAA Division II National Qualifier.
