In a sport known for its viciousness, LSU’s rugby team relies on something other than brute force to overcome its opponents — speed.
This weekend, the rules will play to the Tigers’ advantage.
The LSU Rugby Club, which is ranked No. 6 by rugbymag.com, is competing Saturday in the Southeastern Conference Olympic Sevens Championship in Knoxville, Tenn. The winner of the tournament automatically qualifies for the first-ever USA 7s national championship.
Rugby Sevens is a variant of the normal 15-man game, with seven players on each side playing seven-minute, rather than 40-minute, halves.
The result is a much faster pace of play, which construction management senior and captain Jeff Levasseur said is the team’s specialty.
“That’s one thing that we’ve stressed a lot is fitness,” Levasseur said. “We’ve always been a lot smaller than everyone else that we’ve played, so we’ve had to use our athleticism and fitness to win.”
The team displayed its speed this summer in Philadelphia at the 2011 USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship, winning the consolation bracket. LSU was the only SEC club to compete.
“The main reason we did [so well] is because we were just running laps around people,” said mass communication junior Allen Alongi.
Eight players are gone from the team that traveled to Philadelphia, including standouts Bobby Johns and Adam Ducoing, leaving the team with an unusually small senior class of “three or four,” according to Levasseur.
Despite team youth, Alongi said LSU is relatively experienced.
“Anyone that we play against, they just don’t have the base knowledge and experience that we have,” Alongi said. “We have people on our team who’ve been playing for over 10 years now.”
LSU lost to Tennessee in the finals of the inaugural SEC Sevens Championship last season. A rematch may be imminent, with rugbymag.com listing the two teams as favorites. Florida and Georgia were cited as other teams that could make a splash.
Levasseur said the Volunteers play a more traditional brand of rugby than the nimble Tigers.
“They’re a lot bigger than us,” Levasseur said. “We’re in better shape and just quicker. I think we have better ball skills than they do. They have brute force. They hit. They have the size to them.”
The captain isn’t intimidated.
“We’re going in there expecting to win this,” Levasseur said. “We’ve been working too hard.”
 
—-
Contact Alex Casarra at [email protected]