Dominic Tianga’s rise has been as meteoric as it has been unlikely, but he’s a player you overlook at your peril.

After first stepping onto the field with the West Pines Wolfhounds, Tianga has started to take over rugby games. At 5-8 he is not tall, but thanks to his play, he has continued to make a name for himself in positions patrolled by much taller individuals. Tianga doesn’t care. He’s going to take on that challenge.

“I’m built like a bowling ball,” Tianga told Goff Rugby Report. “It’s always a challenge being short playing positions [like flanker and No. 8] that are meant to be for tall players. Every time I show up to a tournament or camp they think I am a hooker. But then I got to flank and do what I do. I like to prove myself.”

A running back and linebacker in football, Tianga started playing at West Pines after he came off the field after football practice and saw rugby players on the adjacent field. A friend said he should come out, and “I just loved it from the start. It’s very challenging to make that leap to play another sport that you don’t know. A couple of guys I knew couldn’t handle it because of the physicality, but other guys, like me, loved it.”

Tianga exploded onto the national stage after that. He was seen at Eagle Impact Rugby Academy clinics, and played for EIRA before being selected for the North American Lions to go to Dubai in 2018. That team won the Boys U18 International bracket, with Tianga a breakout star, scoring six tries and earning player of the tournament honors.

That tournament changed Tianga from a football player who liked rugby to a full-on rugby player.

“Dubai was a turning point for me,” he said. “It first struck me that—holy crap I could try to be a pro or maybe on the national team.”

Technique Over Brawn

Getting to that moment is thanks in large part to EIRA. https://www.eirarugby.org/

“I was just a physical player—controlled aggression; I never paid much attention to technique” he said. “But working with EIRA turned me from a hometown player and to someone who could be on a national team. At my first winter camp, I learned more rugby in one day that I’d learned in two years. EIRA has some of the top coaches in the nation. They did everything for me. When I play, Salty Thompson’s voice is always in the back of my head, making sure everything I do is up to part.”

What Tianga learned was to breakdown what he does and rebuild it.

“In EIRA we focused on technique; we’d spend an hour on basic passing,” he explained. “It’s one of those things where you never realize how much you needed it until you do it. They did everything for me.”

A Champion At Queens

A much more polished rugby player, Tianga earned a place at Queens University Charlotte. As a freshman he was the best player on a very good Queens team, helping lead them to a national DII championship this past fall.

“It hit me my senior year that rugby was going to take me far and take me to college,” Tianga explained. “I could use rugby to make my parents proud. If it wasn’t for my parents pushing me every day wouldn’t be so successful, but rugby did a lot for me. 

“Queens offered me a very good deal, and being there has been one of the best experiences of my life,” he said. “Yes we won a national championship, but the thing that caught my eye was how it wasn’t just a rugby team; we were a family. We ate together, hung out together. It was a brotherhood. We didn’t really care that we were winning, we cared that we were with each other.”

So why is he leaving? Because he is leaving.

A New Challenge

He’s transferring, to West Point.

“Going into the Army was something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. I wanted to go to West Point, but my test scores weren’t up to par,” he explained. “What I needed to do was go to college and show I could handle it academically.”

He did, getting a grade point average of greater than 3.8, and that, along with his continued great play, was enough for the US Military Academy.

So this summer he has been working hard to get ready for boot camp, and studying, too. He wants to be an Army Ranger, and you get the feeling that this bowling ball may roll right on through to that goal. 

“I’m very excited,” Tianga said. “And the thing it, rugby totally helped me get there. If it wasn’t for rugby I 100% wouldn’t be going to West Point.”

So that was a surprise. After the talk about playing for a national team, you thought maybe it was a rugby national team. Well maybe still, but it looks like Dominic Tianga will be out there with a uniform bearing the Stars & Stripes, only that flag will be on a helmet, not necessarily a rugby jersey.