Sustainability Of Rugby

Rugby is regarded around the world as a high intensity, physical, and challenging sport. In the United States, it is regarded as a barbaric, un-regulated, and foolish sport. This misconception comes from the widely inaccurate notion that concussion among other injuries is inevitable in the sport. Rugby is beginning to take hold in high schools across the countries, and young adult athletes are the first generation to bring this internationally recognized sport to America. The idea of rugby being not safe however has also leaked into adolescent athletes. Students’ choice to play rugby in high school is being influenced negatively due to wrong perception permeating from the media that it leads to severe head injuries.
The human brain
Sustainability is the idea that everything must have a healthy cycle that ensures its entity will remain alive. This can be applied to any aspect of life, from economics to cooking. Rugby requires the ideals of sustainability as well in order to become a prominent component in America’s high school sport field, as well as survive as a sport. A hindrance to the sustainability of rugby is student athletes’ perception of the sport and the injuries associated with it. Concussions and similar injuries are a significant deterrent for students wanting to join the sport. Many are frightened by the possibility of irreversible brain damage, despite the data declaring that a highly unlikely outcome. The false idea that rugby is an extremely dangerous activity with no regulation to prevent injury scares away potential players. In a survey that I conducted, high school age athletes were questioned about their knowledge or experience with rugby and concussions, the findings showed that three out of every four were unaware that rugby has a lower concussion rate than similar contact sports. Another reported trend revealed more than half were not aware that rugby is a safe contact sport (Richey). At Hudson High School, the location of the survey, the rugby club is not a school sponsored sport, due to the lack of school awareness and participation. With similar situations occurring across the country,
Unfortunately, they remain unaware that rugby is an extremely safe and regulated sport, with a high regard for the well being of each student athlete participating. The stigma attached to rugby being a highly dangerous and concussion prone activity is a fallacy, and yet still influences students. This idea has been slowly secreted by the media since rugby lost popularity in the beginning of the twentieth century. T.V. shows, magazines, and newspapers detail the horrors of rugby matches. They fail, however, to correctly report on injury rate, and dramatize the vulnerability of rugby players. This cultural trend against rugby inadvertently affects high school athletes, and many simply do not realize that they can participate in the sport they want while enjoying protection from concussion. The idea of unavoidable injury in rugby built slowly in America due to the absence of the sport, and the lack of knowledge about the sport. The prevalence of concussion in rugby is a threat to the athletes devoting their time to this sport, however it is not any more likely to cause injury than other contact sports. The stigma attached to it then must be directly related a miseducation on rugby and its practices. Membership in the sport continues to rise, and in order to maintain sustainable growth, education must grow