Burgin Independent Adds Rugby Club

Burgin Independent Schools now has a middle school rugby club.

Burgin has been branching out athletically, adding a bass fishing team a few years back, a trapshooting team earlier this year, and now a rugby club.

Paul Brooks, an English language arts teacher in the middle school, went before the Burgin Board of Education last week to start a club. Brooks, an Englishman who has taught and coached rugby at both the college and high school level, said several students had approached him about starting a club at Burgin.

“It’s kid-generated, not Mr. Brooks-generated,” Brooks said.

Much like the trapshooting team, the rugby club will be open to Burgin students but will not be school supported. Brooks said traditionally, rugby clubs are either self-funding or sponsored. He said he had paid the $160 registration fee to US Rugby, the national governing body for rugby in the United States. Included with the registration fee was catastrophic/liability insurance. The families of the individual players would pay $25.

In his presentation, Brooks noted rugby has grown 84-percent in the last decade. Kentucky currently has six high school and two middle school teams.

To learn more, check out this week’s issue of The Harrodsburg Herald.