With so many sports at our school, some are not as well known by LNHS’s student population. Rugby is one of those sports that isn’t well known by everyone, while very few know what the game is or how it is played.

   “It’s a mix between football and soccer. It has the fundamentals of football, like scoring a try, which similar to a touchdown, putting it in end zone and touching it down, but the game doesn’t stop when you drop the ball, and you don’t use pads, ” Junior Jasmine McAlister said.

To prepare for the rugby games, the students spend time practicing outside of school, working on the skills that they need to excel at the game.

“At rugby practice, we start by running a lap around our practice area, then we do stretches so that when tackling and running we don’t pull any muscles, which is extremely painful. Then, we start doing drills. Usually, we start by passing the ball, and right now we’re working on short passes, working our way out to long passes, which requires more force of the ball, and then we’re working on spreading out across the field to cover more ground. Rucking is what we’re currently practicing on, which is where you go to grab for the ball and try to get command over it, to pass it out to your people on the field, and get to the end to score a try,” Sophomore Olivia McCune said.

Rugby spends a lot of time practicing, but the people on the team typically finds the hard work enjoyable.

“It’s a lot of fun, and anybody that would like to try it, probably should,” Sophomore Anita Hallmon said.