Mid-Atlantic Rugby Conference

The West Virginia University Men’s Rugby Club was founded in 1976 becoming WVU’s first recognized club sport. In that same year the ‘I used to be a Chicken, but now I play Rugby’ tournament was established and has been running annually every year since. Training and matches were played at the grass pitches located at the Coliseum which is now to location of the WVU Marching Band practice ground.

WVU played in Division 1 for many years regularly beating Navy, Penn State and Virginia Tech. However, division re-alignment, lack of resources and training facilities forced the club into Division 2 in the early 1990’s. After some moderate success in the early 2000’s the team went through some difficult times as they were unable to secure a permanent head coach.

In late Fall 2005 Jon Niles was appointed head coach and saw the team enjoy a period of consistent success. In 2006 they ended a Spring season with only two losses and finished the Fall 2006 season placing second in the Allegheny Rugby Union. In 2007 WVU won the league and continued to the Midwest Territory Sweet 16 playoffs and advanced to the Final 4. In 2008 they lost the Midwest Playoffs to Miami of Ohio (National Championship Semifinalist). The team finished the Spring 2009 season ranked #19 by erugbynews.com.

WVU continued a period of consistent success under the leadership Head Coaches Matt Thorn and John Hogan respectively. By 2011 WVU had been promoted back into Division 1AA but failure to secure a Head Coach resulted in the Mountaineers finishing bottom of the table in 2012.

Current head coach Richard Glover took over in the Spring of 2013 and managed to help steer WVU into winning ways again. They finished the Spring season with a 12W 1D 2L record and narrowly lost out to Miami of Ohio in the semifinals of the 2013 Cherry Blossom Tournament. WVU ended their Spring 2013 season hosting the 39th annual Chicken Tournament which they went on to win as undefeated champions. WVU go into the Fall 2013 season with aspirations for a minimum of a top 2 finish in the Keystone Conference.