Scrums, Rucks & Locks: Ready to Try Rugby?

A few Durango locals ravenous for rugby hope to grow the sport in the Four Corners. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by Sky Ute Casino and Durango Gelato Coffee and Tea. I'm Connor Shrieve. Durango has a chair of individual athletes. Charlie Newton hopes to add a team dynamic with his new Durango Rugby Club open to anyone who wants to learn more about scrums, rucks, and locks.

In the town where we live, there's so many individual sports there when like bikes and skis and rafts and like all these other fun things. I grew up in Missouri playing team sports like a team sports town. We don't have that much of that. And yeah, rugby is really important to me and man, I'd really like if we had a team here, so that's why I decided to start a team here.

Newton invites anyone interested in a crash course to join a free weekly practice Wednesday nights at 6:00 PM at the Smith Sports Complex on the FLC campus.

We have no restrictions on like abilities or skill level. Please show up with whatever skill level you have. I'm here to coach, we're here to learn, mostly here to have fun, build community with other people who are interested in rugby, what it is.

The club is a relatively new idea for Newton, who grew up playing rugby in Missouri. He wants to build an organization that supports a men's, women's, and children's club. Well, he is not there yet. He says turnout has been growing in the first couple months of practices.

First week we just kind of like put out some posts on like Reddit, on Facebook, and like throughout town we put up some posters and things just to see who would show up. And we've been getting some steady people coming out. There's people that have played before that are coming out and people that have never seen rugby until the recent Olympics that happened and are interested that come out to play.

For now, Newton wants to build a foundation for first timers.

So it is a lot of recap and a lot of teaching for all the new folks. I would say that it's most, it's maybe like 70, 30, 70% like teaching structured format. And then about 30% of practice is then going to be playing and getting some time just learning the game, hitting each other, or running around, passing the ball, working on the skills.

Rugby's physical nature might be a perfect fit in a town where sport is synonymous with suffering. Newton says the club is gaining momentum.

Well, we're going to go until it gets too cold for anyone to want to come out. My first rugby game was in the snow that I ever played when I was 16 and it's Midwest snow, so it's really cold, crappy snow, and not the fun, good fluffy stuff out here. So we're going to continue to play as much as we can. And there are also tournaments in the wintertime that we just play in the snow, like up in Breckenridge and other places that we can travel to as a group to go have fun.

You can join Practice Wednesday nights at 6:00 PM at the Smith Sports Complex at Fort Lewis College. Find out more information about this and other stories at durangolocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I'm Connor Shrieve.