Eric Slockbower played football for his entire childhood and was a running back and middle linebacker at Deep Run High. As he prepared in 2006 to attend Radford University, which didn't have a football team, he knew he wasn't ready to leave behind the team camaraderie he always loved.

So he decided to try something he had never done: play rugby.

Sure, it was just a club team, but the game sucked him in. He learned the basics - how to tackle and be tackled - and bonded with his teammates.

"They're my brothers," Slockbower said.

The players grew so close that this spring, in pursuit of a national championship, they decided to follow their coach's suggestion and give up alcohol for two months. They practiced almost every day, instead of their regular few times a week, and began running on their own.

The sacrifices paid off May 3 when Radford beat Utah Valley State 25-14 in Palo Alto, Calif., to win the Division II national title.

Radford is moving to Division I next season, which includes potential matches with traditional powers such as Penn State and Navy. Slockbower, a rising junior, will be the club's president.

Though Radford has excelled recently - it won the D-II title in 2003 - the team still mostly comprises guys who never played rugby before college. Of the 60 or so players, just three played during high school. Rugby is a blip on the American sports scene. It is most popular in South Africa, England, Australia and New Zealand.

Radford's club formed in 1988, and Mick Turk has coached it on a volunteer basis for the past 13 seasons.

The first practices of a season are basic. Turk and assistant coach Kurt Goddard explain the game's rules and let freshmen observe noncontact passing drills (all passes in rugby must travel backward).

Tackling is the biggest teaching point. Most of Radford's players participated in football or wrestling in high school. You can't lead with your head tackling in rugby, unlike football, because rugby players don't wear helmets - or pads.

"If you lead with your head, you can hurt yourself," Turk said. "You can get a concussion, or you can hurt your neck. They adjust to it, because they learn real quick."

Rugby can be a brutal sport. "Broken noses are kind of the norm," Slockbower said.

There is no tackling in practice for the first two weeks, because the coaches don't want older players to hammer freshmen and scare them away from the sport, Goddard said.

The game's collisions inflict less pain once Turk and Goddard show their players how to absorb them.

"Once you learn the game a little bit, it's not as bad as people think it is," Turk said.

And once freshmen play their first game, "then they're hooked," said Goddard, a lifelong rugby player who emigrated from South Africa and played on Radford's 2003 team. He will take over for Turk next season, trying to build on this spring's success and bonds.

Slockbower now lives with four of his teammates. He relishes those Saturday afternoons when he pulls on his cleats, white shorts and red-and-white jersey and heads to Radford's field for a game, 300 or so of his classmates lining the sidelines for the biggest ones.

"Pretty much everything and more I could have asked for," he said.
Contact Darryl Slater at (804) 649-6026 or dslater@timesdispatch.com.