Life Rugby Plays Live on NBC
Sixteen Colleges Compete for Rugby Seven’s Championship
Michael Hollerbach DC Student
Life rugby will be live and nationwide on June 2 and 3, participating in the Collegiate Seven’s Championship just outside of Philadelphia. Sixteen teams will play thirty eight matches to decide one champion. The biggest schools in the country have been invited to play, Texas, Notre Dame, Penn State and Florida, just to name a few. Life is the only team who earned their way into the tournament by winning the Las Vegas Invitational tournament in February.
The championship takes place at PPL Park in suburban Chester, Pa. PPL Park will be filled with 18,500 college students from all across the country, who will all be cheering on their schools. One unique aspect to the stadium is the four party decks that will be rocking with excitement throughout the weekend. There will also be a live concert taking place at the stadium, with the band to be announced soon.
“This is a great opportunity to put Life University out there to the nation and promote chiropractic all around America,” said Life University player and DC student Paul Bester.
UG student-athlete Glen Maricelli added, “We are all excited to get the Life University name out there and show the country what Life University is all about. We appreciate all the support from the students, faculty and administration.”
Life University is hoping to make a big showing at the event. The school set a goal of 1,000 fans at the event, with hopes of being the loudest and most enthusiastic fans in the stadium. Being live on national television will give the school some great notoriety. Never before in the history of the school has it stepped onto this level of a national sports stage.
The school has put together four great packages for those that want to be a part of the action. All packages can be purchased by going to the main page of the Life website, http://www.life.edu. There is a Student Package that includes tickets to the games, hotel, and three team t-shirts all for $115. The team shirts look similar to the jerseys the team will be wearing. Everyone will be told prior to the tournament which color shirt to wear to each particular game. The team will be sporting three newly designed stylish and cool jerseys. The objective is to wear the same colors as the players so our school stands out in the crowd and on television.
The Veteran Package is $100. This includes tickets to the games, three team shirts and a two-day pass to the awesome party deck. The party deck is a special area of the stadium for those who want to mingle and enjoy the game in a more raucous area. PPL Park has four different party decks located throughout the stadium.
If you want to go full out, you can choose the MVP package which includes tickets to the games, three team shirts, a dri-fit replica jersey, a party at the team hotel the night before the tournament and a two-day pass to the party deck. If finances are an issue but you still want to be in the game, the Rookie Package is the least expensive. It includes tickets to all of the games and three t-shirts for only $65.
If students want to load up their friends in the car and go on a road trip, it’s about a twelve-hour drive to Philly. If you’re interested in flying, Air Tran, Delta and, US Airways have direct flights. The school has reserved twenty-five rooms at the Econo Lodge in Lester, Pa. If you do not want to drive once you arrive in Philly, the Econo Lodge is offering free shuttles to and from the games. So, this may be a place where you want to reserve a room.
NBC is very excited about televising the sport of Rugby Seven’s. It’s a fast paced, non-stop action game less than twenty minutes in duration, which is perfect for the attention deficit television audiences of America. When asked about NBC’s interest in collegiate rugby, Jon Miller, head of programming for NBC Sports and Versus, said “Rugby Sevens first came on our radar a few years ago when it, along with golf, was admitted as a new sport into the Olympics. We started looking into it, and we realized what an incredibly fast-paced, exciting sport it was, one that people in this country really didn’t know about.”
The entire rugby program is working hard to bring home a championship. Undergrad player Cam Dolan adds, “We are excited, but our first goal is finishing out the 15’s season as strong as possible, although we really can’t wait to be on national TV and make our school proud.”
This is a huge event for this institution and the students. Please, step up and get together with your friends, get involved and go to Philly for the weekend and enjoy the festivities. Eat some Philly cheesesteak or hoagies. Go visit the Liberty Bell. Run the Art Museum steps like Rocky. It is going to be unlike any other event this school has ever seen. It’s the end of week nine. Blow off some steam, have a great time supporting our boys and come back ready to slam the door shut on the last two weeks of classes. This may be the one weekend you look back on years from now and say, “Wow! I was there and it was awesome!” Don’t miss it. As Jim Rome would say, “It is going to be epic.”
