But not in rugby.

That is, until Chris White started playing.

While at WAHS, the 2018 graduate did play football. There are similarities, yes, but if you Google “differences between rugby and football,” you might find, “In sum, rugby — with the exception of The Hunger Games — is the most violent sport ever,” according to The Bleacher Report.

“The first time I ever saw a rugby game was during the 2016 summer Olympics because they added rugby sevens to the summer Olympics that year,” said White, a junior at Clarion University. “I would watch it and found it interesting, but never had any interest in actually playing it.”

Submitted Photo Warren graduate Chris White — running and making tackles — finding his niche in another sport, rugby.

White’s had his hands full as a college student serving in the Army National Guard.

“I found out about Clarion rugby through my friend, Ethan Zdarko, who I saw at the weight room all the time,” said White. “He asked me if I would be interested. … When the fall season came around, I didn’t really have the time to or really wanted to play. It was spring semester on the first day of classes when I talked to my history professor, Dr. Sanko, who convinced me to come out for a few practices and try it out. It also helped me that the urge to compete hit me hard to the point where whenever I’d go to the weight room, I would be competing with myself by trying to set PRs every day I was in there.”

Before he could compete, he had to learn the sport; everything about the sport.

“Believe it or not, I fell in love with it fast,” said White. “When it came to practice, a lot of my practice time has been spent learning the rules and tactics more than anything — more emphasis on the rules. … I learned the technique mostly on my own with coming home and going down to Beaty Park with my younger brother, Ben, to practice passing, kicks and throws, while also throwing the football to him.”

Rugby is best described as a blend of the contact of American football, the running of soccer, and the transition of basketball, according to diffen.com. It is a game played between two teams with 15 players on each, played on a rectangular field, with the object being to run with an oval ball across the opponent’s goal line or kick it through the upper portion of the goal posts.

The most significant differences between American and rugby football are that in rugby all players are allowed to handle the ball and, any sort of blocking, forward passing and timeouts are not allowed. Unlike American football, in the case of rugby, any kind of screening and obstruction to players who do not have the ball is not allowed. This is the main reason why rugby is much safer than American football. Unlike American football, only lateral passes are legal, and running and kicking can advance the ball. In American football, one forward pass per down is permitted, so long as it originates behind the line of scrimmage.

Whew. Sounds complicated, at least for someone who has only played American football.

“Even with all the time I spend in practice, I still do not know all of the rules, but I’m learning more every game and practice,” said White. “It hurts more the morning after — just like with football.”

In rugby, there is lack of hard protective equipment such as a helmet and padding. That’s why, in the case of rugby, players are also taught to tackle with personal safety in mind. In football, hard tackles are allowed which is why there is padding.

Try explaining the rules to mom.

“It’s a brutal sport for sure,” said Chris’s mom, Marcia. “There are some similarities to football, but wow. The injuries. Chris’s teammate broke his nose in the first game that day.”

Chris’s parents, Marcia and Jeff, WAHS’ athletic director, watched him action on March 19 in a club match at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

“It’s actually fun to watch once you understand it a little bit,” said Marcia. “Rugby … as if I need one more thing to worry about. Always the entertainer. And so fearless. National Guard, MMA, rugby, becoming a teacher. Nothing seems to scare him.”

Growing up, White played football basketball and baseball, along with his brothers and extended family. “However, when I got older, I had a desire to learn and compete in different sports.”

White didn’t try wrestling until he was a senior in high school.

“(Rugby) is fairly new here and it isn’t NCAA-affiliated,” said White. “The basic rules are you have to take the ball and touch it down in the end zone (that’s where we get the term touchdown from). Play is continuous — unlike in football — so after the tackle, you keep playing. You can pass the ball, but only backwards or sideways, not forward … but you can kick the ball forward. When there is a penalty, to put the ball back into play, you do the scrum; that one is a bit hard to explain, I’m sure you can look it up on YouTube to see it. There are positions, and it depends on what kind of rugby you are playing; it can range from 7-on-7 to 15-on-15, and the position I play is ‘hooker,’ who hooks the ball out of the scrum. So far, we have played in two sevens’ tournaments, and I’ve played in seven games so far.”

White’s Golden Eagles’ club team played in Nashville, Tennessee, this weekend, but White couldn’t make it due to “drill,” a National Guard responsibility.

“We have two seasons — a fall and a spring season — and our season for the spring started Feb. 26, and our conference championship is April 30 in Clarion,” said White. “At tournaments, we play teams that are local — like IUP — to we even play some Division I teams like UMBC (University of Maryland at Baltimore). Our conference, the Allegheny Rugby Union, spans from western Pennsylvania to Indiana the state.”

Mom is learning.

“The socks really make the outfit,” she posted on Facebook.

“My mom feels kind of indecisive about it; she doesn’t understand the rules,” said Chris. “Next for rugby for me is to keep playing as much as I can. I love it. It gives me the same exact feeling that I got when I laced up my cleats to play football down at War Memorial.

“And it looks more violent that what it is,” he added.