TRB tracks those high school student-athletes who have aligned with collegiate rugby teams (link), and while the list is dominated by NCAA varsity, NAIA and elevated club programs, there are exceptions. Last season, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) enacted a recruitment strategy to engage the Michigan girls’ high school system, and the efforts have already paid off with five experienced players for fall 2020.
GVSU head coach Darien Ripple has been playing and coaching rugby for decades. The Maryland native picked up the game as a freshman at Salisbury University and went on to play on the east and west coasts, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Tri-City Barbarians in Michigan during summer 7s. His wife played at GVSU and later with San Antonio, and when the family relocated to Maryland, the kids played with Freedom Fighters Youth Rugby Club in Rugby Maryland.
“It’s an amazing program,” Ripple praised Rugby Maryland’s youth efforts. “And Freedom had about 100 players. Working and coaching with them, I learned some skills on how you recruit and how to keep excited about playing.”
The family moved to Michigan when Dr. Ripple accepted a professorial position in GVSU’s Integrative, Religious and Intercultural Studies Department. Former GVSU women’s rugby coach Abe Cohen contacted Ripple’s wife to gauge her interest in joining her alma mater’s coaching staff, and she connected her husband with the longtime Lakers coach. Ripple had limited experience with women’s rugby but did coach a hybrid Michigan State-GVSU squad during summer 7s, and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity. He joined the Lakers coaching staff as an assistant coach in fall 2018.
“Abe brought me in two years ago and let me take over more of the strategy of the game,” Ripple said of his introduction to the team. “The whole idea was that I would take over the team [the following year] but it turned out that I had to apply for it, get a resume together and interview for the position. Even though I was a professor there, Club Sports takes it seriously when they’re hiring coaches.”
Players fundraising in-season
The observation supported the team’s established standing on campus. The Recreation & Wellness department oversees Club Sports and supports the teams (check out the Rec-hosted website). Ripple indicated that the team has on-campus space for matches and practices, although there is competition for those spaces. The team has access to an indoor training facility in the winter, which allows the team to jumpstart spring 7s training in February.
“We get money from the school but at the same time, they let the clubs know that they’re responsible for fundraising,” Ripple said. “I don’t deal much with that but [club president McKenzie Cain] and the team take it seriously.
“Grand Valley also has a great alumni system that donates,” the coach added. “For the Sweet 16 [of the 2019 DII Fall College Championship], the alumni started a GoFundMe out of the blue and raised over $2,000 for travel. But we don’t have the kind of money where we could do a national 15s and national 7s tournament in the same year.”
GVSU officially hired Ripple as head coach in August 2019, and he leaned on his education background to create a vision and game plan for the squad, but to also build unity. He set achievable goals that could be measured, and the team bought in.
“When he first took over our program he expressed his goals of becoming a nationally ranked team,” Cain recounted. “In order to reach that goal, he broke down the dynamics of getting there over the course of a couple years, and recruiting is where he wanted us to start. He has been involved in the rugby community for over 35 years so his knowledge and love for the game is going to help us reach our goals. He expresses his ideas and we make them happen.”
The Lakers started building a recruitment plan and executing it in-season. As Grand Valley swept the Great Lakes conference, it also followed the Michigan girls’ high school league and Ripple began contacting coaches. Meanwhile, the collegians advanced to its farthest point in the post-season, defeating UW Oshkosh in the fall championship Round of 16 and then falling to eventual champion Winona State on the very next day.
“It was our first time there [at the fall quarterfinals], so they realized the significance,” Ripple said of the post-season’s effect. “The game plan was working. The team we played against [Winona State] played our game plan but just did it better. They had numbers and we didn’t, and I expressed that to the team: We need 30 players.”
Both coach and players attended important high school events and engaged that community.
Grand Valley players at the Michigan girls’ HS state championship
“A few ways we have gotten our name out to teams is by attending the state championship in the fall as a team and hosting high schools to our practices,” Cain detailed the outreach. “We had between 10 and 15 members of our team attend the girls’ state championship held at Grandville last fall. By doing this we were able to speak with the teams and congratulate them on their success and let them know that they have the opportunity to continue their love for the game after high school.”
“It was insane,” Ripple said of the Sparta-Rock vs. Grandville final. “It was a Sunday afternoon, both teams had 30+ athletes, and there were over 200 people watching the match. … When I saw that following, it became my call: I’ve got to recruit here.”
Ripple handed out business cards to parents, kept communicating with high school coaches, and then started hosting individuals and teams like Grand Haven at practice. Ripple explained that veterans are accustomed to teaching younger players (40% of the team that competed at fall regionals had less than a year’s experience), and the high schoolers integrated nicely. The collegians bonded with their younger counterparts and then kept in touch via social media. The team also did a good job of marketing the team on campus.
Ripple has also attended high school practices to introduce himself and the Grand Valley program.
Grand Haven HS players at Grand Valley practice
“My pitch is two-fold,” Ripple said. “I tell them I’m the coach for Grand Valley and ask for their thoughts on college rugby, and the first thing they always said is, ‘I’m going to Davenport because they’ll give me a scholarship.’ That’s most high schoolers but they don’t necessarily understand the overall construct of how much college costs, so it’s educating them a bit.
“What I think about most is graduating kids from college,” the coach continued. “Rugby is fun, but college is about getting an education, and we have a superior education to most places. Grand Valley has 25,000 at the school and it’s academically the third-best in the state behind Michigan State and Michigan. There are incredible majors and programs, so the school sells itself.
“My soft sell is that we went to the ‘Elite 8’ and went undefeated in the conference, and have a running gun style of play that’s fast-paced and fun to watch,” the coach concluded.
And then it’s all about follow-up, and Ripple treats the recruitment process like rugby is a varsity sport on campus. At the time of print, the team has advertised five additions to the team for fall 2020, and they all have rugby experience. Had Covid-19 not intervened, he would have also hosted social touch 7s during the summer, inviting the men and women’s players as well as the high schoolers.
Ripple anticipates a squad of 30, which can only aid the process of becoming a nationally ranked team, but another key component to that goal is having healthy, local competition.
“We’re a team with 30 players, and let’s say we go to play one of our competitors that can barely field 15. How do you keep B-side players ready to play and give them a positive experience,” Ripple posed. “My goal – and I’ve talked to [Central Michigan coach] Rob Burns and other coaches about it – is: How do we help, say, Calvin College be more competitive given their limited resources? That hasn’t been enacted but it’s the direction the conference needs to go.”
Ripple envisioned some forgiveness in the bylaws – like the mandate that if a team forfeited an away match one year, then it had to play that game on the road the following year – but is also hoping for some guidance from National Collegiate Rugby (NCR). The Great Lakes conference aligned with the governing body after USA Rugby restructured and has conversed with NCR Open Division commissioner Angela Smarto. She doubles as the Allegheny commissioner and thus can identify with Ripple’s concerns for meaningful competition for a variety of member schools. Smarto has suggested creativity – e.g., scheduling 7s matches with small-roster teams – and the flexibility has encouraged Ripple. For example, he explained that Grand Valley Community College has rugby players in its ranks and asked NCR whether their participation in B-side games or practices might be allowed.
Covid-19 will require even more creativity to not only recruit and retain players, but to make sure the newcomers have as positive an experience as possible. Ripple and team are having these conversations now.
“They are still going to be part of our team, regardless of whether we have a season,” Ripple said. “The players have done a great job reaching out to them, seeing if they need help with housing, engaging them in our social media. And we’ll still have events. They might be on Zoom but people will be able to meet each other. And the players do such a good job of bringing people into their community. During warmups, for example, they put out a silly hypothetical question that everyone answers so they can get to know each other a little better.”
Grand Valley has not announced return-to-campus plans for fall 2020 yet or its impact on fall sports, but the rugby team is preparing for all scenarios and will be ready to adapt its recruitment and retention in the steady build toward next-level achievements.
To learn more, visit the Grand Valley women’s rugby website, Facebook (@gvsuwomensrugby) or Instagram (@gvsuwomensrugby).