Ivy League schools gather at Yale today to contend a championship that’s older than most, but something less than well-established.
First played in 1969, 15 years after the well-known athletic conference was founded, the tournament has been won 10 times each by Brown and Dartmouth. The latter is the defending champion and the only team headed to USA Rugby’s round of 16, and therefore the favorite.
But 2005 Northeast semifinalist Cornell is playing in the Cherry Blossom, in the belief that its previous commitment to the Washington DC event, made when the Ivy championship was calendared for another weekend, takes precedence. The New York school’s decision underlines the competition’s tenuous place on the calendar.
Rugby is neither a varsity championship recognized by the Ivy League, nor do the eight schools play one another as their regular league season. Instead, they stretch out among four local unions and two territories.
Several have very old rugby pedigrees. Harvard is generally acknowledged to have played North America’s first rugby match in 1874, against Montreal’s McGill, and Dartmouth students are recorded as playing a version of rugby beginning in 1877.
But it was a Yale scrumhalf named Walter Camp who was most influential in codifying and propagating the rules of American gridiron. Among them were the forward pass and the open scrummage (or scrimmage).
In addition to its non-varsity and non-league status, Ivy League rugby also faces the uncertainty of USA Rugby’s declared intention to mandate a nationwide spring season. That could make it difficult to schedule a social championship, as Northeastern weather typically limits the spring playing window to four to six weeks.
Interestingly, touring remains popular when school is not in session. Dartmouth, Princeton, and Yale each visited Argentina earlier this year, while Brown went to Ireland and Harvard to Brazil.
Dartmouth’s reserve side will take Cornell’s place in the knockout championship.
Ivy League Championship
Dartmouth (1) v Columbia (8), winner to play winner of Penn (3) v Princeton (6)
Harvard (2) v Dartmouth ‘A’ (7), winner to play winner of Yale (4) v Brown (5)
Seedings in parentheses
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