When he came to Jesuit HIgh School, Max Richins ‘18 wanted to play on the baseball team since he was 4 years old. However, Max got cut from the baseball team, so he turned to rugby.

“That was the best decision I made,” Max said.

Max started playing rugby in 8th grade and has played Jesuit rugby for now three years and will continue to play this year.

Jesuit Rugby practices after school five days a week for nearly two hours. Max mostly thinks the high intensity practices have a “pretty chillax” vibe. Each day, they work on tackling, running the ball and throwing the ball .

All of this practice makes Jesuit good enough to play teams from other countries such as the Canadian Shawnigan Lake High School and Saint Ignatius Australian Riverview College because they destroy all the local competition. But against the international competition, they lost by double digits in both games.

“You could tell that it was their sport,” Max said. “They knew the game really well.”

Jesuit Rugby is held to high standards so they continue to play very well and continue to make it to games with other high level teams.

“We know the challenges we have to face,” Max said. “We are all pretty confident. The team last year knew we were a good team and we would get far.”