There is a lot going on at Maryville University as the St. Louis-area college is embracing rugby in its athletic department.

Daniel Jones has taken over the women’s program which is going to make its school-supported debut this spring, and Keith Hancock has taken over as the men’s Head Coach, joining in mid-October, and is actively recruiting to be back on the field after a rough fall.

Maryville is targeting NCR’s May Madness 7s in New Orleans this spring.

The men’s program has been around since 2011 but wasn’t taken under the athletic department’s wing until 2020. The team has full funding from the school and scholarships available, but of course COVID made everything ten times more difficult in terms of growing the new program.

Meanwhile, the women’s program is even younger. At a men’s recruiting event in 2017 some women showed up and started asking about a women’s team. They had four members, so set about recruiting and after they started to build something, you guessed it, COVID hit.

Jones and Hancock have been hard at work recruiting for the teams, and while COVID slowed down things, it also left them with some unused funding they can put to good use now. 

The rugby teams are categorized as club teams at Maryville, but the school addresses club teams differently from intramurals. So hockey, basketball, soccer, and volleyball, as well as rugby, as are all currently club teams at Maryville. Hockey, especially, has done well, earning a Top 10 ranking in the ACHA rankings for both men and women. (Hockey is an interesting parallel to rugby, as schools familiar to college rugby fans, such as Lindenwood and Adrian, are featured prominently in those rankings.)

Connecting HS rugby players with good colleges that play good rugby, all safely and with rugby in mind—download the Next Phase Rugby app at NextPhaseRugby.com. 

But the key thing is, there is funding for these programs.

“Maryville is putting a lot of money into athletics at the moment,” said Jones, who played four years at nearby Lindenwood. “We’re growing faster than we can keep up.”

The rugby teams train on the baseball outfield under the lights, or on a turf pitch, and they have their own grass rugby pitch for games.

The two programs work together to build the game and recruit, and that’s where GRR sponsor Next Phase Rugby comes in. Jones said he has been using the app to connect with potential recruits on a regular basis.

“Next Phase Rugby builds US rugby,” said Jones. “We checked with our Athletic Director to make sure it was OK, and he said it was fine, and we have been on there since mid-November. It’s astonishing. Even though there are more boys than girls on the app, I can go on there while I’m putting my kids to bed and in 10 to 20 minutes I have found three or four potential contacts. For us as coaches it’s been huge and I am already talking to players who are looking at coming in 2024. It’s just such a huge opportunity for colleges and for players.”

Maryville is, in a way, coming into the rugby scene out of nothing. Their men’s team struggled for numbers in the fall because Hancock was just being brought in. He has since doubled the number of players on the squad in part because the school is getting behind the program. Jones has some players, too, and will compete in 7s, but he said the plan is to play at a high level soon.

Maryville University is a private university in the St. Louis area that offers over 90 degrees and has about 3,500 undergraduate students.