The university’s rugby club has been an established organization on campus since 1967 and is the second oldest university rugby club in the Gulf South. The team will be commemorating the club’s 50th anniversary with a match.

The team competed in tournaments which includes winning the Deep South Championship in 2001.

“Over the course of its existence, the storied SLU rugby squad won numerous state and regional championships, propelled scores of players to relative stardom, and became a mainstay of club sports on the Hammond campus,” said Leon Ford Endowed Chair, Professor of History and member of the team’s committee Samuel C. Hyde in a press release.

The university’s club created its own tournament. Hyde described this tournament which is dubbed the Mardi Gras Tournament.

“The success of the SLU team gave rise to the internationally renowned Hammond Mardi Gras Tournament which, for a time, was the largest rugby team in the world,” said Hyde in the press release. “At its peak, the Mardi Gras Tournament hosted more than 200 teams from as far away as Japan.” 

The commemoration match for the rugby club is scheduled to be held on Nov. 18 at 1 p.m. at the football practice field adjacent to Strawberry Stadium. This 50th anniversary match is also the beginnings of reviving this forgotten club sport.

Hyde explained why the club’s involvement on campus began to fade. 

“Unfortunately, Hammond did not have enough hotel rooms to house all the people,” said Hyde. “It got so big that they had to play out at the airport. The Hammond Airport was the only place that could accommodate them. They had so many games going on at one time. One of the women’s teams, an Australian team actually, went down in the ditch and all the mud. It had been raining a lot, and it was very muddy and took off their tops and began washing themselves off in the ditch by the road and a Baptist minister drove by and saw that and got upset by it. So the shortage of hotel rooms and that are what caused the tournament to go away.”

Though the team was no longer on campus and many university attendees began to forget about Lion’s rugby team, it remained a successful club. 

 “The team stayed around here for years and has been enormously successful and won lots of tournaments and had a lot of players over the years go on to a lot of success and everything,” said Hyde. “What happened to it though is when the new construction began on campus they took away the original rugby field, which used to sit in the back of the library where that parking lot is now. That’s where it was, and then they moved it over to beside the kinesiology building and then when they put the new track on the kinesiology quad right there that took away the other rugby field, so that’s why you haven’t heard as much from about it lately.”

Being off campus has hindered the team’s growth, and they hope with this anniversary match, it will create interest in the club. 

 “They kind of pushed the team off campus, and they struggled on trying to practice at North Park and then even a field up in Tickfaw for a while,” said Hyde. “But there hasn’t been like a real home field that the team could use and what we’re trying to do with this 50th anniversary match is revive interest on campus. So we’re encouraging students to come out even ones that haven’t played before and watched our play, and it’s a big effort not just to bring our alumni back we got people coming from as far away as California and Georgia to play in the match this Saturday. But it’s also to encourage a revival of the team on campus.” 

The club is currently in discussion to bring back the Mardi Gras Tournament with the first objective of bringing the team back on campus. The club almost has enough members to begin practicing, and the members hope this anniversary match with help fill the rest of their quota.

The match on Saturday will offer attendees food and refreshments, an award ceremony, a family-friendly reception during the match, and afterward for people of age, there will be a pub crawl through Hammond. Hyde invites everyone both familiar and unfamiliar with the sport to attend.

“I invite everyone to come out and take a look,” said Hyde. “Even if you haven’t even played rugby before, this is an excellent chance to get to watch it. We will even have parts of the match where people who have never played before if they want to come out to get a taste of it and feel what it’s like. This is a great group of people that are all connected to Southeastern. They’re alumni and current students, so it’s a friendly match. It’s not designed to be high intensity or high pressure or anything. It will be a fun day, so I encourage people to come out and help us rebuild this great Southeastern tradition.”