Football, baseball, basketball, rugby, hockey, soccer: one of these things is not like the others.
Five of the six aforementioned sports typically come to mind when considering the most popular sports in the United States.
Internationally, the sports that come to mind include soccer (or football in this context), followed by cricket and possibly tennis or baseball.
At Taylor University, football, basketball and baseball – as well as cross-country and volleyball – are just a few of the sports that rattle around the brains of students daily.
But a few women on campus have found their passion in another game.
Rugby’s popularity in countries like South Africa, England and Australia hasn’t quite translated over to the U.S. Despite America having a professional rugby league (Major League Rugby), its nationally televised games come few and far between, and attendance rarely peaks above 5,000 fans.
But despite its minimal stateside time in the limelight, rugby has been at Taylor for well over a decade on the men’s side.
Nicholas Kerton-Johnson, associate professor of political science and international relations at Taylor, is a man of many gifts. Not only is he a professor, a former club rugby player, and the head pastor at Kingdom Life Church in Gas City, Indiana, but he is also the head coach of the men’s and women’s rugby clubs.
Fondly known as Coach KJ by his players, he started the men’s rugby club in 2011 and brought his love of the sport to Taylor from his birth nation of South Africa. But the women’s team didn’t start as his goal. Instead, that was the vision of someone he was quite familiar with.
“My daughter (came up with the idea)!” Coach KJ said. “We actually had about 30 girls come out when we first started rugby in 2011 but that was social. The club team that competes against other universities was Grace’s vision.”
Senior Grace Kerton-Johnson inherited her love of rugby from her father, and the KJ dynamic duo created the women’s rugby club together during Grace’s sophomore year in 2021.
The team began as a joint program between Taylor and Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU), but over the past two years, the team has been almost completely made up of Taylor students.
Grace leads the team along with her co-captain and sole IWU representative, student Ashley Ingram. They lead a roster of around 12 players and practice three times a week through the fall and spring.
“The women captains actually do almost all the selecting of drills and running practice,” Coach KJ said. “I come alongside them when they need help, to teach form or to teach new skills.”
And practice they do. Most of the players had never watched rugby before, much less been out on a rugby field when they decided to try out.
Flyers, group chat texts and simple word-of-mouth encouragement built the team. Junior Emma Benno, a foundational member, has been on the roster for all three seasons. Benno joined because it looked really cool, she said.
“It was really just a poster that I saw and it said no experience needed,” Benno said about her initial interest in the team. “I was instantly sold because I was like, ‘I want to do a sport!’ (and) you didn't have to understand what was going on, you're learning it.”
Grace described teaching new players as a process of learning and encouragement. Rugby is a sport that is unfamiliar to many Americans because of its rules and banning of forward passing. Rather than advancing the ball forward, like in soccer or football, rugby is a game of laterals and backward passes with bursts of sprinting and progressive movement down the field.
“Learning how to pass the ball is how we basically start out,” Grace said. “It takes a while to learn how to do it properly and do it well. We’ll teach them how to pass and then start with really basic tackling so they learn how to do it.”
The team plays a version of rugby known as “sevens,” which is a 15-minute game with seven players a side, no replays, commercials or timeouts – just constant action.
During the season, Taylor will frequently play in weekend tournaments with three or four games a day. Due to the large fields and fast pace of play, each successive game becomes more and more tiring.
Through rain, snow and bitter cold they play, but through the exhaustion the players find an incredibly rewarding experience.
Junior Maria Fish has been on the team since her freshman year and describes the speed of the game as one of her loves of the sport.
“I like that it’s not like football and not like soccer, it’s a weird mix of both in some ways,” Fish said. “I’m generally a really energetic person when it comes to being outside…being able to run around, have a good time, work out, and you get all of that with rugby because it’s a full-contact sport. You gotta give it your all and by the end of each game you’re absolutely exhausted, but it’s so worth it.”
Due to the roster’s small size and three-year process of team-building, the community has become one of the most unique on campus – a beautiful combination of support and encouragement.
The players major in biology, women’s history, chemistry and social work. They live in English Hall, Olson Hall and Gerig Hall. There is almost no natural crossover between the students’ academic lives, but on the field, they are sisters in arms and off the field, sisters in Christ.
Sophomore Madi Smith described the feeling of playing rugby as “going to war,” due to the game’s physical nature. The team both on and off the field is based on trust, and that trust has carried them a long way.
“We’re very honest with each other, very vulnerable with each other,” Smith said. “We pray after every practice. Check up on each other all the time…it’s a sport where you really rely on each other and so, because of that, the teamwork is super important, and we’ve put a lot of effort into communication and making sure that we work together well.”
The athletes of the Taylor University women’s rugby club have found a passion for the sport…and they’re not just passionate, they’re talented.
This season, they’re looking to sit atop their conference, the Ohio Valley Women’s Collegiate Rugby Conference. Last season, Taylor won their division’s cup, earned the right to move up a tier of competition and ended the year one game away from their national tournament.
This season, they’re looking to finish what they started and make a run at the national tournament come springtime.
“I am really hoping that we’re going to be able to make it to Nationals, I mean, that’s the dream,” Fish said.
Players come from every corner of campus and from every major imaginable; some of them are double majors. They’re involved in residence life, other sports clubs and many other extracurriculars, but they keep coming back to rugby.
It’s a community that starts with Grace and Ingram, furthered by Coach KJ, and adopted by all the players on the roster.
Emily Clementz is a 2023 graduate student living in Upland and is part of Taylor’s Transition to Teaching program. Despite working as a substitute teacher for Eastbrook Schools and at a diabetes prevention clinic, she still feels called back to her old team.
Clementz was part of women’s rugby while she was an undergraduate and still works with the team. She visits practice, joins them at tournaments and supports them even if she isn’t out on the field.
Clementz said the community is a ton of hard-working girls with a lot of grace and a lot of understanding amongst each other.
“You are with people who really care about you as a human and also want to work towards a common goal of learning a sport and playing it well,” Clementz said.
Whether they’re going to war on the field or supporting each other off of it, the Taylor women’s rugby club is driven by two things: their love of the game and their love for each other. It’s that love that carries them for every practice, every tournament and every prayer.
