It’s not common that you get a young athlete choosing a college in part because of rugby even though he hasn’t played rugby, but that’s kind of how Thomas McCrimmon ended up at UNC-Wilmington.

A football player (fullback and outside linebacker) and wrestler in high school, McCrimmon received some offers to play football at DII schools, but wanted to go to a college that had a strong biology program.

He also wasn’t convinced football was right for him going forward.

“With the football and wrestling background, I thought I’d be a good fit for rugby,” McCrimmon told Goff Rugby Report. “And when I visited UNCW I really liked their biology program and they had a rugby team that was extremely competitive. So I made the transition. Turns out it was a pretty good choice.”

It was worked out on all fronts. The junior pre-med major is looking at a career in medicine, and also enjoying taking down ballcarriers as the Seahawks’ all-everything openside flanker.

“I have a pretty hungry mentality,” said McCrimmon, who helped his UNCW team win the Southern Rugby Conference this past weekend. “I want to get around the field. I want to get out there like a bat out of hell, make tackles, run with the ball, just make plays.”

And so he has.

“Tom is one of the best players in America,” said UNCW Coach Jeremy Tominack. “He trains harder than anyone I know. He is en exceptional player and could go far.”

High praise from the coach, but McCrimmon is just happy to be in a good program.

“it’s an awesome feeling for us to do so well,” he said. “We’ve won our conference four out of the last five years. It’s become an expectation for us. We had a close game against Coastal Carolina, but one awesome thing about this team is we play better in the face of adversity. We came off the field at halftime and we were down 17-0. We weren’t playing that badly but Coastal had the ball and great field position and we were committing penalties. But no one got discouraged. We were like ‘alright, we need to start scoring points.’ Nobody had any doubts.”

UNCW scored 23 unanswered points to win the game and book a spot in the national DII Round of 16 against RPI.

“We have one of our goals accomplished,” said the flanker. “Now what we want to do is go deep in the playoffs.”

McCrimmon has personal goals, too. He wants to get his medical degree (in what discipline he is yet to decide on), but he also wants rugby in his life.

“It would be awesome to play at a higher level,” he said. “My main focus is school, but I would embrace the opportunity if it was there.”

You get the feeling he’d embrace it and knock it down just like the tackles he makes all day.

Tom McCrimmon is our Aircraft Charter Solutions Player of the Week.