Growing American Youth Rugby

We are proud to announce our participation in the Youth Rugby Initiative, a new program that will introduce rugby for the first time to elementary and middle school children in their physical education classes across the country. At its heart, the game of rugby is simple, much like playing the kids’ games of tag or sharks and minnows – but with a ball. If you hand boys and girls a ball and teach them some very simple rules, they can play rugby with teams of any size and anywhere there is a place to run around. It’s fun and easy and, importantly, it’s the only youth sport where the emphasis is entirely on eye-hand coordination and catching the ball. There are no racquets, bats, gloves or sticks, etc. Only your hands.

The YRI concept is to introduce non-contact flag rugby to physical education teachers, provide them with lesson plans, teaching videos and rugby balls and have them teach their students the elements of playing rugby. YRI’s “market” is the roughly 33,000,000 boys and girls taking PE classes at 87,000 K-8 schools nationwide. YRI will utilize the “free” infrastructure of teachers, gymnasiums and fields at these schools to bring rugby to thousands and thousands of kids.

YRI will ask state-based youth rugby organizations, clubs and teams to provide volunteers to attend PE teachers’ conventions, reach out to PE teachers and provide website-based teaching materials. YRI will provide participating schools with kit bags of appropriately sized balls, flags, belts and field markers. Where possible, they will also send coaches and players to schools to introduce the game of flag rugby.

Youth Rugby Initiative will be looking for people and organizations to apply for USRF grants to help implement the YRI concept, and we are raising funds to make this possible. YRI estimates the cost to implement this program to be between $300 and $1,000 per\school, including training visits and the equipment kit bag. We want to reach all 87,000 schools, so our work is cut out for us.