In the tiny town of Simms, just west of Great Falls, a rural rugby tradition was born.
That was 2004. Five years later, the burgeoning U-19 Montana Youth Rugby Association still calls Simms home, but it has also welcomed five new teams, including a squad from the Flathead called the Black and Blue. The other four are Drummond, Missoula, Frenchtown and Helena. There will likely be more in coming years.
Like players from the other teams, the Flathead boys have already proven in their first season that what they lack in experience they make up for in Montana toughness. The Black and Blue played in its first tournament on April 18 in Drummond, dropping two hard-fought matches to Drummond and Missoula.
Russ Bloom, a rancher who was one of the founding coaches of the 2004 Simms team, knows first-hand the grittiness Montana athletes bring to the pitch. His team, hailing from a school with 110 total students, has matched up admirably over the years against Canadian high schools with 1,500 students.
“They say, ‘You have 110 kids at your school? We have 110 kids on our rugby team,” Bloom said. “Our boys compete. They’re Montana, farm-boy tough.”
The Simms team began after a teacher and former rugby player, Steve Lundgren, decided to give his town an opportunity to explore a sport that is unfamiliar to most Americans, let alone a rural community tucked away in northern Montana.
It turned out, however, that Lundgren’s proposal wasn’t so obscure. For one, Bloom is a former college rugby player himself, so when he heard about Lundgren’s idea, he jumped aboard. Then kids showed up in droves and thus high school rugby began in the Big Sky state. Bloom said most of the kids “had never seen a rugby game before.”
“It was basically started to give small town boys something to do in the spring,” Bloom said.
A team from Fort Benton started up too but fizzled out within a few years, leaving only Simms. So the Simms team traveled to Canada and other states, signing up for any games they could find, traveling in a school bus and learning on the fly. Some were football players, others were just rugged farm boys.
Bloom recalls what an opposing coach told him: “Boy, your kids just tackle everything that comes by.”
Over the years, teams trickled into the league, culminating with its newest member this year, the Black and Blue or, officially, the Flathead Valley High School Rugby Association. The team has 17 boys from Flathead, Glacier, Whitefish and Stillwater Christian high schools. Aside from an Italian exchange student named Federico Monti, no player had any prior rugby experience.
The idea for a youth team has bounced around for years amongst a group of former players for the Flathead Moose, the local men’s team. But the idea didn’t materialize until this winter, following the passing of Dave Himsl, the Moose’s founder. Himsl always wanted to see a high school rugby team, especially for his son, Max, who now plays for the Black and Blue.
Bob Foley, who played alongside Himsl for the Moose, set out to recruit players for the team. As was the case in Simms, it turns out a few teachers in the area are rugby enthusiasts. Flathead High School’s Rob Ford, an ex-rugby player, was able to gather 15 kids and another former rugby player, Matt King of Stillwater Christian, sent a handful of kids Foley’s way. Throw in a few guys from Glacier and Whitefish and Foley had a team.
A couple of Foley’s long-time acquaintances from the Moose – Dave Reese, Yuji Morisaki and Rich Lapp – were eager to help out and suddenly the Black and Blue had a seasoned coaching staff. The name Black and Blue was chosen because it combines the colors of Glacier, Flathead and Stillwater Christian. And it just seems like an appropriate name for a rugby team.
Max Himsl, a junior at Glacier High School, has finally made his way to the rugby pitch after years of watching his father play. Much of the game feels natural, as one would expect from a lifetime immersed in the sport. But Himsl knows he has a lot to learn and he’s grateful the team exists to give him the opportunity.
“It’s great and it’s getting better,” Himsl said after a recent practice at Kalispell’s Hillcrest Park.
Adult rugby is struggling across the state, including in the Flathead. The Black and Blue’s coaches hope the growing popularity of the high school league will bolster the men’s leagues several years down the road. It’s fitting that guys like Foley, Reese and Lapp, who won state championships together in the 1990s, would be the ones to pass the torch to the kids.
Bloom values the impact rugby has had on his small community. Kids who might not play school-sponsored sports now have an athletic outlet. Locals gather to cheer jovially for a sport they had previously never considered watching. And, Bloom points out, the kids have been given the chance to venture far from their rural town across foreign borders and to cities like Seattle: “Three quarters of these kids had never seen the ocean.”
“It’s a great sport and they love it,” Bloom said. “We’ve never had a boy play a game and quit afterward. They stick with it.”