By Maggie Brandenburg
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Many Americans have long considered football to be the roughest contact sport in the country. But for senior Taylor Wagner, rugby, especially with its lack of padding, is far rougher. And Wagner, who plays both football and rugby, said he can’t imagine it any other way.

“I love the guys I play with and it’s just an awesome sport. It’s real fun to play. It’s laid back, but at the same time, there are times you need to get serious about it. I love how everybody can have their own chance to score and everybody can do everything on the field at once,” Wagner said.As the ancestor of modern day American football, rugby shares many aspects with its padded counterpart. The goal of each game is to reach one of the two zones at the end of the field, and teams are also able to kick for points through a pair of uprights.

But then the two sports diverge. One of the main differences between football and rugby comes from how the ball can be moved. In rugby, the ball must either be passed laterally or backwards and can only go forward on a kick. Also, play is continuous in rugby and only stops for a penalty or an out-of-bounds ball, sort of like in soccer.

Assistant coach Don Craft said, “(Rugby) is such a challenging game. Every player has the opportunity to score, and every player will be in contact with the ball. There aren’t set plays that the coaches call, once the game starts, it’s in the player’s hands. They make the decisions. It’s not like you get to run a set play every time the ball starts. The ball is (in) continual motion. You have to react to what you see on the field.”

According to Craft, even though rugby is the second most watched sport in the world behind soccer, the sport has not seen as much success here as with the rest of the world. And while the Carmel rugby program has seen major growth in the past few years, with programs beginning as young as elementary school, the men’s high school program still has not managed to garner much attention from spectators.

“Everyone in the U.S. is so obsessed with football and everyone kind of has their mind on that,” Jonathan Purnell, both a rugby and football player and senior, said.

But for now, the players of the men’s rugby team are concentrating on winning a State championship, a goal which Wagner say the entire team is dedicated to achieving.

“Our captains got together during the off-season and decided our number one goal, no matter what, is the win State,” he said, “In the past there have been different goals to make it to certain tournaments, but just cut and dry, we want to win State this year.”