The Harvard Rugby Football Club is the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

(NCAA) Division I

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

program that represents

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in the

Ivy Rugby Conference The Ivy Rugby Conference is a rugby union conference consisting of the eight member schools of the Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern ...

. Having been established in December 1872, Harvard has the oldest rugby college program in the United States. Harvard's first involvement with the sport can be traced to 1874, when Harvard played a two-game series vs Canadian

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

. As the second game was played under the rules of

rugby football Rugby football is the collective name for the team sports of rugby union and rugby league. Canadian football and, to a lesser extent, American football were once considered forms of rugby football, but are seldom now referred to as such. The ...

, Harvard embraced the game and continued until the establishment of

American football rules Gameplay in American football consists of a series of ''Down (gridiron football), downs'', individual plays of short duration, outside of which the ball is ''dead'' or not in play. These can be Play from scrimmage, plays from scrimmage – passe ...

that introduced concepts such as

line of scrimmage In gridiron football, a line of scrimmage is an imaginary transverse line (across the width of the field) beyond which a team cannot cross until the next play has begun. Its location is based on the spot where the ball is placed after the end o ...

or the system of downs. In past years, the team traveled to

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

for the National Tournament (Top 16) after having taken the Ivy League title.

History

Established in December 1872 for former players of defunct

Oneida Football Club The Oneida Football Club, founded and captained by Gerrit Smith Miller in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1862, was the first organized team to play any kind of football in the United States.Boston game", an hybrid between

association Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...

and

rugby Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

football established by the Bostoners.''THE BOSTON GAME''
article by Michael T. Geary at academia.edu"THE FOOTBALL H: A CRIMSON H ON A BLACK SWEATER ''The H Book Of Harvard Athletics 1852 1922''
(archived, 21 Ago 2010) HarvardMcGill

In 1873 when the Harvard team received an invitation from the McGill University football club. The McGill team was then in a similar situation as Harvard, as they sought some team with which to play rugby football and no other club wanted to play that game. Harvard boys agreed to a rugby match with McGill under the condition the Canadians played the Boston Game. As McGill accepted, a two-game series was scheduled for May 1874 in Boston. The team captains sent letters detailing their respective game's rules and it was agreed that the first game would be played under Boston rules and the second under rugby rules.No Christian End! The Beginnings of Football in America
By PFRA Research (Originally Published in The Journey to Camp: The Origins of American Football to 1889 (PFRA Books) On 23 November 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale,

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...

, and Columbia met at the Massasoit Convention in

Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ...

, agreeing to adopt most of the

Rugby Football Union The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is the Sports governing body, national governing body for rugby union in England. It was founded in 1871, and was the sport's international governing body prior to the formation of what is now known as World Rugby ...

rules, with some variations,Camp and His Followers: American Football 1876–1889
By PFRA Research (archived) so the "

Intercollegiate Football Association The Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA), also known as the American Intercollegiate Football Association, was one of the earliest college football rules-making and scheduling organizations in existence; it was active from the 1873 to 1893 ...

" was established.

Competition

Though Harvard NCAA athletic teams compete in the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

, since 2009 Harvard Rugby team has competed in the

. Predating the formation of Ivy Rugby Conference (where each of the eight men's rugby teams played each other over the course of a semester), each spring, from 1969 through 2004,

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

rugby team hosted the Ivy League Rugby Tournament Championship at their campus. Harvard has won the Ivy League Tournament Championships in 2007, 2003 and 1994 and were National Champions in 1984, as well as National Championship runner-up to Cal-Berkeley in 1981 and to Air Force in 2003. In 2009, the men joined a newly established

that kicked off as a separate collegiate conference that operated as its own union (replacing the need to be part of a 'local area union' or 'territorial union' within the national

organization,

USA Rugby USA Rugby (officially the United States of America Rugby Football Union, Ltd.) is the national governing body for the sport of rugby union in the United States. Its role is to achieve and maintain “high levels of quality in all aspects of rugb ...

, such that Harvard no longer was required to be part of New England Rugby Union except for the use of referees certified by a group related to the New England Rugby Union. The Harvard Men's Team, along with the

and Yale Rugby teams, began the tradition of U.S. college students going on Spring Break to the Caribbean. Recently, the Harvard Rugby Football Club released a film, "Just a Club".

Harvard Business School

The

Harvard Business School RFC The Harvard Business School RFC is a rugby union team based at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts. The club formerly competed in the New England Rugby Football Union (NERFU) and is composed of graduate students from throughout Harva ...

is a rugby union team based at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

in Boston, Massachusetts. Although affiliated with Harvard University, only graduate students compete on this team.

Facilities

Harvard play their home matches on Roberto A. Mignone Field, located at Harvard's Soldiers Field Park.

Notable alumni

Ted Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr. (July 25, 1915 – August 12, 1944) was the eldest of the nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. A US Navy lieutenant, he was killed in action during World War II while serving as a l ...

Robert Bacon Robert Bacon (July 5, 1860 – May 29, 1919) was an American statesman and diplomat. He was also a leading banker and businessman who worked closely with Secretary of State Elihu Root, 1905-1909, and served as United States Secretary of Sta ...

Lucius Littauer Lucius Nathan Littauer (January 20, 1859 – March 2, 1944) was an American politician, businessman, and college football coach. He served in the United States House of Representatives from New York for five terms between 1897 and 1907. Littauer ...

Kevin Rafferty Kevin Gelshenen Rafferty II (May 25, 1947 – July 2, 2020) was an American documentary film cinematographer, director, and producer, best known for his 1982 documentary ''The Atomic Cafe''. Background Rafferty was born in Boston on May 25, 194 ...

* Robert Winsor * Ethan Taotafa

References

External links

*
Harvard Men
at Ivy Rugby {{Ivy League rugby Harvard Crimson rugby Rugby union teams in Boston Rugby clubs established in 1872 1872 establishments in Massachusetts