The new Midwest DII Conference could be a dark horse in the playoff picture, with several solid programs that ave won at the DII or NSCRO level.

Among them is Bethel College in Mishawaka, IN. With Gil Gadia in as Head Coach and Darrell Knowlton, assistant coach in charge of the forwards, Bethel has moved up from NSCRO to try its hand at DII.

“We have a lot of talent in the state of Indiana,” said Gadia. “We know we have an opportunity to build a program. But we also know that there’s talent in some of the high school programs that don’t go to nationals every year.”

“A lot of the kids we have I coached against in high school,” added Knowlton, who also coaches the Culver Military Academy HS program, which is a varsity program. “They are from lower-tier DI teams or DII teams, and their coaches did the best they could with them; they’re solid kids who might have been a bit under-developed.”

What that means is smaller high school programs often have only the one coach, maybe two, and sometimes one-on-one development of a player is difficult to do in that context. These players have found the love of rugby in their high school programs, but playing at Bethel has been a different animal.

Bethel was 11-2 last year, going 8-1 in the regular season, and making the NSCRO Challenge Cup national playoffs. That was only the program’s second year in existence. Now in its third year, the players are starting to understand what it takes.

“They are learning to be varsity athletes,” said Gadia. 

The players go through a hard-working week - strength & conditioning on Mondays, training and instruction Tuesday through Thursday, captain’s run on Friday, and the game on Saturday. 

“We’ve given these kids a shot and they have seen the bar and risen to it and taken it seriously,” said Knowlton. “The Athletic Director’s been awesome. The school’s been supporting us. We’ve got a designated practice field, a scrum sled, the things we need. And the players have responded.”

Bethel practices on campus but doesn’t actually play there. The Pilots play at the nearby Moose Rugby Grounds in Elkhart, Ind., and Knowlton says it’s one of the best rugby pitches in the country, so there’s no need to move. They can still draw a good student crowd there.

The school itself is a Christian school, and the curriculum reflects that. As Knowlton says, “it’s for many denominations, and the curriculum is about your connection to what you believe in that’s greater than yourself.”

But it’s not for everyone, so the players who go there know the school, as well as the rugby, is right for them.

This year’s iteration of the Bethel Pilots includes some talented newcomers such as Niel Adam Theron, a South African who has a ton of rugby knowledge, and Alfredo de Lara, an Illinois all-star from the Neuqua program, which has already provided talented sophomore Nick Chevalier.

Bethel has joined the Great Lakes conference that includes Grand Valley State, Calvin, Ferris State, Hope, Saginaw Valley State, and Oakland University, along with the addition of Eastern Michigan and Bethal. Immediately the Pilots come in as contenders. The school is a good addition to the Great Lakes, which shrunk considerably last year after the southern teams moved to NSCRO. That southern group is now the Midwest Colleges, with a combination of DII and NSCRO teams (fairly common in the game now).

But in the Great Lakes there's been a complete separation of the divisions, with eight teams in DII (Eastern Michigan is probationary). 

For Bethel, with the team's quick ball-movement and high octane offense, it's all about competing at the next level, and that's something the Pilots can do.