As Elon University’s men's club rugby team end their regular season, they have an exciting opportunity awaiting this postseason; the opportunity to host the playoff tournament at home. 

Ivie Shelton, the assistant director of Campus Recreation for Sports Programs at Elon University said one of the department’s goals is to host more games and tournaments at Elon. 

“I know that both of our volleyball teams are hoping to host stuff here in the future, as well as a couple of our other teams talk about hosting like our women's ultimate team,” Shelton said.  “We're really hopeful it will open those opportunities.”

Luke Wood is a senior at Elon who first started playing rugby in 2022.

As the president of men’s club rugby he said he thinks being able to have the playoffs at home will provide more publicity for Elon.

“Last spring we held a 16-team tournament and it was a big success,” Wood said. “Being able to hold more important sports events at home will actually make us more popular as a university and put us on the map.”

Shelton oversees all club sports and intramural teams and she said she fell in love with club rugby. She was not a rugby player in college, she became passionate about club sports in her role  as the president of the mixed martial arts club at Oklahoma State University. During that time she said she got to work very closely with their college rugby team.

Shelton also said that that is where she really fell in love with rugby while growing up watching it because it was her favorite sport.

“While being at Oklahoma State University I worked very closely with the rugby team there, and I got to see some of their matches as well as hang out at their practices,” Shelton said.

Shelton said she thinks the players as well as the coaching staff will be very excited and ready to host the playoffs at home. 

“They're super excited for it, especially with this being so many teams,” Shelton said. 

On the other hand there were some challenges to being able to have this event at home for Elon University. Wood said keeping up with the conditions of the fields and making sure they are clean and ready to go for the matches has been a challenge

“We currently have one field solely for rugby and when hosting tournaments we need at least two fields,” Wood said. “Reserving space was pretty difficult.”

Wood said he has also noticed Elon struggles with numbers with the attendance and the crowd at sporting events.

being able to host the playoffs at home in the town of Elon will benefit us but also it will encourage the crowd and friends or family to attend the games and matches.

Shelton also said that being able to play at home for the playoffs for any sport benefits any team.

“It makes it really easy for them, as well as it tends to be a good centralized location for quite a few of the schools that we compete against,” Shelton said. “So I think they also enjoy it.”

Shelton said some factors leading to this decision were that most of the staff members for club sports and the facility staff members will be there already because Elon would be staffing the event.

“As time has gone on, they kind of built their reputation, as well as their coaching staff,” Shelton said. “Ryan Bays has been a part of the club at one time as a student and has been coaching it for many years now.” 

And this is not the first time the team has received the chance to host playoffs at home.

“Last year we hosted a seven team tournament,” Shelton said. “This year will be the first time that we will have a 14-15 team regional playoffs for people to qualify for nationals.”

The tournament will take place from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 8 at Comer Field.