When he visits schools and works with youth in Denver-area communities, spreading the gospel of rugby, Mark Bullock is searching for one very specific trait in a prospective player.
A pulse.
“We accept everybody,” said Bullock, who founded the Glendale Raptors rugby club in 2005. “We don’t care if you are well-to-do, not well-to-do. We don’t care if you’re in this group or that group. We don’t care. We just want you to get involved and play with us.”
The come-one, come-all message of ambassadors like Bullock is a major reason rugby is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States. From 2008-13, youth participation rose 81 percent in the United States, according to a study commissioned by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association — and it has continued to grow.
Last year, 61,500-seat Soldier Field in Chicago was sold out for a rugby match between the United States Eagles national team and the world-famous New Zealand All Blacks. The sport will take on an even bigger spotlight when it debuts at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro — and NBC will regularly televise rugby nationally in the buildup to Brazil.
Locally, the University of Denver will host the 2015 College 7s national championships May 23-24 — an elite tournament arriving in the Mile High City at a time when youth rugby participation in the city is at an all-time high.
In short, it’s an exciting time for the sport.
Bullock sees numerous reasons for rugby’s growth in popularity in America. For one, it has shed much of the stigma that had long labeled it as a dangerous game. As more data surfaces about head trauma suffered by football players, families are searching for other options.
“Some people still think rugby is more dangerous than football, when in reality it’s just the opposite,” said Bullock, who pointed out that Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll employs rugby technique when teaching his players tackling form. “It’s because we don’t wear pads. Your head is up. You see the people around you.”
But rugby’s growing reputation as a safer alternative to football isn’t the only reason the sport is rising in Colorado, which features perhaps the country’s finest rugby facilities in Glendale’s Infinity Park. Since the Raptors club was founded a decade ago, its leaders have left no stone unturned in introducing the sport to young people in every community.
That’s why, when Geraldolyn Horton-Harris, a community organizer in the Five Points neighborhood, told Bullock she was looking for ways to engage kids in Mestizo-Curtis Park, the rugby guru was quick to put a team together.
“I said, ‘If you need a program, I’ve got your program,’ ” said Bullock, who met Horton-Harris through a leadership program at the University of Denver.
So a half-dozen members of the Raptors organization, including youth programs manager Jenna Anderson, made their way to Denver’s oldest park on a Saturday morning this month to teach a group of roughly a dozen neighborhood kids a game many of them had never seen.
“The thing I love about what we do when we come to events like these is seeing kids who don’t know anything about our sport, and then they leave with something new and different,” Anderson said. “It gets their brains going in a different direction, getting them interested in something else.”
Anderson, who has worked with the Raptors since 2008, said the after-school program the organization runs has seen more participants this year than ever before, and she and Bullock are constantly searching for new places to bring their sport — no matter how many people are there to play.
“We provide them all the same things that kids need — inclusion, teamwork, discipline,” Bullock said. “We play for each other, All of the things that kids need, rugby provides. Rugby is fairly unique. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to do. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You just need a ball and some shorts and a shirt. It’s an easy thing for people to get involved in.”
As the Raptors worked with the kids that Saturday morning, Bullock’s eye was drawn to Toryian Tubbs, a middle-schooler who was darting around the field, tossing the oblong ball with precision.
“He could be a good rugby player,” Bullock said with a smile. “He’s fast, he moves well. He’s got a knack for it.”
He’s also got a pulse.
Nick Kosmider: 303-954-1516, nkosmider@denverpost.com or
