North Penn Rugby Club showcases growth
North Penn Rugby Football Club still going strong
As it celebrates its 30th year of existence, the North Penn Rugby Football Club is flourishing.
The evidence is all over, from its men’s team jumping from Division III to Division II in the Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union (EPRU) to its highly successful high school teams, the girls a state title contender, club members playing collegiately and a rapidly growing youth system. Even more visual evidence was on display Saturday as the club hosted its annual North Penn 7’s Tournament.
In all, 24 clubs met at John S. Clemens Memorial Park for a day of rugby on the pitch and socializing off of it.
“The turnout was fantastic and the weather was fantastic, we tried to up our game a little bit this year,” North Penn vicepresident Mike Sciarra said. “We tried to further our community outreach. We just moved up from Division III so we’re excited about facing the higher caliber of competition and we’ve also been pushing our 7’s program.”
Sciarra said there was a bit of a scheduling conflict with a national qualifier tournament also being held on Saturday but was regardless ecstatic to have so many good programs meet on the gorgeous grounds at Clemens Park. The turnout featured a lot of local flair including clubs from Doylestown, Northeast Philly and Phoenixville but also some from outside the area including teams from Maryland, Harrisburg and
the Wilkes-Barre area.
Not only is North Penn doing well, it’s seeing an uptick in numbers. The club’s Phoenix Flag program, which introduces kids aged pre-K to 6th grade to tacklefree rugby, has grown from 40 to nearly 80 members in the past few years while the youth and high school programs are also pulling in numbers.
“We have two men’s players coaching our high school girls’ team and a men’s club and former high school club member coaching the boys’ team, our Phoenix Flag program is getting its feet on the ground, that runs through the summer,” Sciarra said. “We’re really trying to expand it and get into the market that may be looking for something different than the local soccer or baseball.”
Max Darst didn’t think he was going to last more than a few practices when he came out to the club’s high school program as a freshman at Souderton. Now heading into his junior year at Arizona State, the Harleysville resident couldn’t imagine his life without the game.
Darst, who graduated from Souderton, fell in love with the game and has continued to play in college and said it became a major factor in his college decision. While the youth system wasn’t yet in place when he started playing, Darst has a lot of pride in how much growth his hometown club has since then.
“It’s more than just playing a sport, it’s really about the culture behind the team, we have a real family atmosphere where people can come and feel part of something more than themselves,” Darst said. “We want to do well while we’re playing, so everyone in the club works hard and we have a strong brotherhood.”
Mario Ventresca, who captained North Penn’s 7’s side on Saturday, called the Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs a “hotbed” for rugby. Ventresca, who graduated from Lansdale Catholic and still resides in Hatfield, played on LC’s nowdefunct high school rugby team and helps coach the North Penn high school squad.
In recent years, the collegiate 7’s championships have been contested at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester, with NBC broadcasting the event and Sciarra said it’s had a noticeable impact on interest locally. Darst noted on of the things he most enjoys about the sport is that while it’s easy to learn, it’s tough to master.
“It’s been incredible, for me personally in a selfish standpoint, you take a guy like Max who I got to coach in high school and now I’m running around playing with him,” Ventresca said. “For me, that’s really gratifying. There are a lot of guys on our current men’s team who have now come up from our youth rugby. You’re able to step back and see this guy’s been playing for seven to nine years and he’s still only 21, 22 years old.”
As much as there’s a competitive edge in rugby, and there most certainly is, the game is as much about mutual respect. Teams that weren’t playing during Saturday’s day-long tournament would socialize under their respective tents and North Penn hosted a social for all the teams and players in attendance afterward back at its home base of the Hatfield American Legion.
“Winston Churchill had a quote that ‘soccer is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans and rugby is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen’,” Darst said. “You have to have an amount of respect for the people you’re competing against.”
Ventresca said one of the club’s mandates is to generate a family atmosphere
“It’s more than just playing a sport, it’s really about the culture behind the team, we have a real family atmosphere where people can come and feel part of something more than themselves. We want to do well while we’re playing, so everyone in the club works hard and we have a strong brotherhood.” — Max Darst
so that players want to come back and play in the summer or during the club’s annual Alumni Day on Thanksgiving weekend. Aside from Darst, there were several other North Penn members currently in college back for the day and the high school girls’ team has sent more than a few players on to national powerhouse Penn State.
“There are guys who I played with back when I was first coming up in the club that I now coach their kids,” Ventresca said. “It kind of all comes full circle. The origin of our club was a youth rugby team and when they got to a high enough level, it became a high school team and then a men’s team. From the very start, our club’s origins are based in that family-first approach.”
On top of its internal growth, the club has expanded its footprint in the community. It’s not hard to find signs promoting the club anywhere in Hatfield, North Wales, Harleysville, downtown Lansdale or anywhere in between and the club has partnered with a number of local businesses including new kit sponsor The Greene Turtle.
Sciarra said the goal of Saturday’s event, aside from the rugby, was to fundraise for the club with most of the proceeds going right back into the youth and high school levels. As a next step, his hope is to get the tournament sanctioned as a national qualifier which will bring in more teams and more competition.
The club, which began in 1988, has more planned for its 30th anniversary including a trip to London in April and a special alumni gathering planned for the Saturday following Thanksgiving.
“It’s a lot of community outreach and the grounds here are just perfect,” Sciarra said. “Being in Hatfield, and it seems funny to say with it being this close to home, but you don’t have this type of grounds and ability to put on a tournament like this in a lot of places. Having a place to be able to put out a consistent product but also make it better and better has really helped us out.”