Lander University officially joins the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA) in fall 2021, and so the current school year was always going to be important for building momentum into the Bearcats’ first NCAA varsity season. But once Covid-19 took hold, head coach Buck Billings just wanted to give his student-athletes purpose and a sense of normality, and is pursuing that balance of safety, activity and connection through a spring 7s season.
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Lander University’s testing protocols have kept the campus open all year, but students have the option for online instruction, and athletes can defer team commitments without loss of scholarship monies or eligibility.
“We’re pretty fortunate being a DII NCAA school that we’ve been able to test as frequently as we have,” Billings said. “We’ve tested our athletes all year long and have been able to creatively deal with close contacts [exposure] and positive [cases] by moving kids to hotels or isolated dorms.”
Billings is grateful that he’s with an institution that has committed resources to make life on campus possible.
“What the public doesn’t realize is how hard it is on our athletes psychologically,” Billings said. “There’s pressure to not test positive, but it’s not like a drug test where you know you’ll pass. You can social distance and wear masks, but if you live in a dorm or eat in cafeteria, you could have a contact tracer say to you one day, ‘You ate lunch within six feet of someone who tested positive. You need to be by yourself for up two weeks.’ So that anxiety is always there.”
With that said, many rugby players have opted out of the season during the pandemic. Billings indicated that these players intend to return for the fall, but he worries for their staying power.
“It forces them to have a lot more internal drive,” Billings said of student-athletes on their own. “It’s hard for me to maintain continuity of checking on them and seeing how they’re doing because I don’t see them. They’re not supposed to come to all the team activities because they’ve opted out. I want them to stay connected, but that’s a challenge, and I just hope these kids don’t disappear on me.
“It’s not happening here but in other sports and at other schools – just knowing the college sports world – a lot of kids fall through the cracks athlete wise,” he added. “There are first-generation college kids and they lose their focus. They get fatigued being in a pandemic and start forgetting why they opted out in the first place. They know it was for safety but then 10 months of quarantine go by and they’re acting like a regular college kid. Being an athlete isn’t as relevant anymore.”
And that’s why bringing games and competition into his players’ lives became so important.
“I just want to get some normalcy in their lives,” Billings said. “Unfortunately – because this is not a good thing – so much of the student-athlete identity is the athlete part, and when you take that out of their lives, then other aspects of their lives lose their structure. Some normalcy gives them some control in their lives because so many things are happening that they don’t have control over.
“So we just need to play, even if it’s 7s or it’s low numbers,” the coach continued. “We also need to play because next fall [in NIRA] we don’t want to be playing rugby for the first time in almost two years. Right now we’re rusty because it’s our first rugby in almost a year-and-a-half, but we’re getting it in now so it’s not totally foreign in the fall.”
The Bearcats are cleared to play other teams, NIRA and otherwise, that have the same Covid-19 testing protocols, but cannot participate in multi-team events. So game days involved multiple 7s games against a single opponent in one day. On March 6, Lander welcomed Clemson University to Greenwood, S.C., for three 7s games.
“They had 18, 19 players and were very fit,” Billings said. “It’s one of the more athletic Clemson teams they’ve had in a while.”
Lander had a good amount of possession in the first match but late-phase turnovers allowed Clemson to deploy its speedy attack and run in two tries: 14-0 the final. The Bearcats rallied for a 17-5 win in the middle match before dropping the third contest 24-12. Clemson jumped to a 14-0 lead in the final game, scoring off the opening kickoff and then running in a second from the subsequent tackle. But Billings was pleased with how the team battled back from the deficit and nearly overturned the lead.
“I was impressed,” Billings said of the outing. “Our ladies played our pattern of attack well and worked really hard. Jess Burt played phenomenally. Her defense and ball-running were really great, and she set up some players really well. She stood out, and so did Julia Anhalt. She had some great set-ups for Jess and played good defense. Our captain, Paige Wisebaker, played really well the first two games [before sustaining an injury]. We could have used her in the third match for sure. But overall, everyone played well and I’m pleased with them even though we didn’t win the day.”
Lander had 13 players for their season-opener against Clemson and regrettably had to cancel the follow-up games against Queens University of Charlotte on March 13. The Bearcats were supposed to play USC this weekend, but then the Gamecocks had a positive Covid-19 case and the fixture was canceled.
“It’s impressed me that the kids have stuck to it when it’s really testing their resolve,” Billings considered the lack of certainty in a pandemic. “It’s such a challenge to commit to the hard work and put in the time in the classroom knowing that games can be canceled last minute. We had hoped to play Queens but got banged up [against Clemson] and weren’t able to. Normally we’d have the numbers to sustain a few injuries. I’m proud of the kids that pushed through that.”
When the student-athletes who opted out this school year return in the fall, the roster will be closer to 30 players.
The rest of the spring includes 7s fixtures against Queens, Alderson Broaddus as well as Davenport University (Mich.) on April 2 in Athens, Tenn. Panthers captain Mariah Pruitt is one of Billings’ former players from McMinn Tribe.
“If I can get the kids through this with good grades and health, and ready them for when we get back to a normal routine, then that will be a win,” Billings closed. “I’m just glad that I’m at a school that said, ‘If there’s a safe way to do it, then let’s do it.’”
For more information, visit Lander University women’s rugby.