If you check in with Adrian College’s men’s team you’ll see a piece of good news, and something curious, as well.

The good news is, the players are back on the field. When we last left this team it appeared that they would not play again this spring—conflict between the players, the coach, and the administration, fueled by the administration’s response to a rather innocuous traffic stop, had led to close to half of the players being kicked off the roster, and games canceled.

Adrian College Program in Jeopardy as Players, Administration Clash

Now, if you check on the team, you’ll see they have played in three 7s tournaments, winning the John Carroll Open, going 2-1-1 in the City 7s and taking third, and then winning the Plate at the Fighting Irish 7s, losing only to Wheeling. Overall their 7s record is 8-4-1. Not bad.

But There's a Problem

But what all of that glosses over is that Adrian forfeited four conference games in D1A. Having played their four fall Midwest Conference matches, the Bulldogs bailed on their spring season because of the aforementioned issues. 

Adrian Rugby’s web page now does not list those games, instead showing a schedule that makes it appear that they play 15s in the fall and transition to 7s in the winter/spring. This creates a false impression and you can see that from a previous Instagram post by the program regarding their Spring, 2025 schedule:

Not one of these games was played.

In addition, Adrian had a game scheduled with Mary Washington and canceled that without any reason give.

We reached out last week to Vice President, Enrollment & Student Affairs Frank Hribar and Head Coach Chris Hathaway with some questions about the program, but they have not responded.

We wanted to know exactly how the team has returned to the field. In addition, we asked about the 38 players on the team roster in the fall, which was reduced to 20 after the conflict in December. Now the roster features 22 players, including 15 of the players that were retained over the winter, and seven who had been dropped off the roster and returned.

Here is what we found out based on multiple sources:

1. After realizing that having no practices and no games looked very bad for a rugby program, Adrian’s administration allowed word to get out that practices were open again. There was no official announcement, but players learned through their chat group that if you showed up to practice—even if you’d been taken off the official roster—you would be allowed to train for 7s.

2. Several players did return and started training.

3. On the way to the City 7s in Kansas City, the team van, driven by a coach, went over some train tracks too fast. The van bounced and players hit their heads on the ceiling of the van. When the van came back to having its rear tires on the road, at least one side window shattered, with glass landing on players. No one, thankfully, was hurt. The coach was persuaded to turn around back to Adrian, where the broken windows were covered with a temporary covering (plastic, cardboard, or tape, or a combination thereof; we’re not exactly sure), and the van got back on the road to the tournament.