Geneseo Men’s Club Rugby Team (pictured above) playing in the Upstate NY D2 division. The team brought up issues with an agreement with the college delegating their practices to Onondaga Field. USA Rugby has deemed the field unsafe for play, but due to lack of space and the agreement, practices are still held there and as a result, multiple players have been injured. (Courtesy of Men’s Club Rugby)
The Geneseo men’s rugby team has raised concerns over lack of administrative cooperation in reassessing agreement for new playing field after reports of injuries.
The USA Rugby Association, the national organization which oversees college rugby teams, deemed Onondaga Field as unsafe for play after inspection, according to history major senior Aidan Fitzgerald.
“We weren’t allowed to host games at home,” Fitzgerald said. “We rented a field out in Rochester and that’s where we have our home games, but we always practice at [Onondaga] still.”
Fitzgerald explained that both men and women’s rugby teams pooled funds from an alumni association to purchase goal posts for Letchworth Field and managed to negotiate an agreement with the school allowing them to host their home games at Letchworth Field.
Lower Merritt and Letchworth fields may be used by club rugby teams for contests against other club teams, but cannot be utilized as a practice field at any time, according to the Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation and men’s and women’s club rugby.
This persisted until last year when a rugby player tore his ACL during a no-contact drill, and then re-injured it again this semester as a result of unsafe playing conditions on Onondaga field, according to men’s rugby Vice President junior Justin Anderson.
As a result of growing concerns over player safety, members from the team went to President Denise Battles’s all presidential office hours on Sept. 20 to address the issue, according to Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald believes the conversation with Battles went well and thought she listened to their complaints. Battles reportedly told the team to expect further correspondence from the school, but the team received no word.
“Our team reached out to Dr. Battles to try to make amends ... and we never heard back from Dr. Battles,” Anderson said.
“We feel ... disrespected to a degree at the lack of accountability when she said she would follow up and there was no follow up.”
The team attempted to renegotiate the terms of the agreement with the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation but were unsuccessful, according to Fitzgerald.
“I’ve been a part of this organization eight years and every single time we reach out, the same thing happens over and over and over again,” men’s rugby head coach Steven Parker said.
“Over the years there have been numerous attempts to try to find a new place for us to practice and work with, and it feels almost as if though when we’re over at [Onondaga] Field we’re out of sight, out of mind,” Anderson said.
“We don’t have enough fields for all of the groups ... I don’t think any institution would have enough fields for the amount of clubs and things we have,” Director of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation Michael Mooney said. “There’s other groups I have to be fair to ... rugby’s no different from Ultimate Frisbee and all of the other clubs.”
Members of the team, including President and captain senior Eamon Danieu, believe the basis for barring the team from practicing on the field is due to the college’s concerns that the team will essentially tear up the field from play.
“Ultimate Frisbee, who practices there the most, has done just as much damage to that field as us, and it seems kind of unfair and kind of illogical that they think somehow us practicing there will do any more damage to that field than is already done on a regular basis,” Danieu said. “I understand, however, that Ultimate has been practicing there for a while, but that shouldn’t mean that we couldn’t work out a practice schedule with them to use the same field.”
The team additionally worries that the college is not taking student safety as a priority.
“It’s just kind of disappointing to see how unwilling the campus is, the administration is in working with us on something when you think that student welfare and student safety should be one of their top priorities,” Danieu said.
Club rugby is not under the financial jurisdiction of Geneseo Athletics, but instead the Student Association, according to Mooney.
“Years ago, there was a push from rugby with their alumni to possibly get [Onondaga Field] somewhat leveled ... but then the cost became too prohibitive,” Mooney said. “As a campus we just don’t have enough facility space or resources ... I don’t have the resources to fix the field when it gets, in a sense, trashed, from the playing on it and that would be for any sport.”
Additional concerns include a lack of funding from SA and as a result, the team has used the same worn-down equipment for years, according to Fitzgerald.
“I get that there’s a decent amount more money involved in varsity sports, but at the end of the day, the school gets as much notoriety from us,” Danieu said. “I understand we’re not a varsity sport and there’s a difference in money we can bring in for the school, but the reputation in getting the school’s name out there—we do that just as much as any other sport.”
The college, Mooney believes, does not have the space needed to accommodate a rugby team either way.
“Their field that rugby really requires to play on we don’t have space big enough … at least at Onondaga it’s kind of open,” Mooney said. “In a perfect world if we had more facilities, more space, then probably they could have a field that was full sized maybe ... but over here none of these spaces are even big enough for any game size field they need.”
The team’s goals are to address the concerns for player safety and find a way to ensure the sport can be played at the safest level possible on campus, according to Anderson.
“We’re a decent sized organization, we have people from numerous countries on our team and I think we do contribute a lot to the environment here on campus,” Anderson said. “So we’d appreciate help from administration and if they could give us a little more support in the future."