On the rugby pitch, Rivers Nuño can usually be seen on the backline wearing No. 11 or No. 14 as a wing for the Brigham Young University women’s rugby team.
Wings on a rugby team are often the fastest on the pitch with the need to cover a lot of ground. Considered to be the team’s finishers — basically those that are responsible for scoring tries — wings tend to be smart with a knack for reading the game. And finally, they must be able to be aggressive when it comes to tackling.
As the daughter of Carlos and Tasha Nuño, it seems to only make sense that she would be a standout in the sport.
“People had always told me that I should try rugby since my mom ran track and cross-country and my dad played football,” Nuño said last week in a phone interview from Provo, Utah. “Rugby kind of combines those two with the tackling and then there is a lot of running.”
A 22-year-old junior majoring in neuroscience at BYU — she served a church mission for a year — Nuño didn’t get into rugby until her sophomore year.
“There are no opportunities really in Oregon, or at least near Philomath, to play rugby so I never really thought about trying it,” said Nuño, who graduated with Philomath High’s Class of 2020. “Then when I came to BYU, I just saw a thing about the tryouts and I just went and it worked out.”
She’s now part of the program’s leadership team, a group of four players that serve in that role beyond the two captains. The team aspect of rugby is what she enjoys most about it.
“In rugby, you need your teammates,” she said. “You can’t do anything on your own so it’s more of a team sport where you have to rely on your teammates for everything that you’re doing. It takes the pressure off you and it makes you want to play harder for your teammates.”
BYU is competing in the College Rugby Association of America’s Division I Elite League, which is considered to be the top college rugby league for women in the country.
“I believe this is only our second year in this division,” Nuño said. “Technically, we’re not supposed to be in this division because none of us are on scholarship. All of the other teams who play, the girls are on scholarship but because we did so well in the lower division, they moved us up.”
The season’s schedule is split up into games during the fall and spring. The action will pick up again in mid-February.
Rugby is played with 15 players on each side on a field that measures 150 yards in length and 75 yards in width with 110 yards between the two goal lines. The ball may be kicked, carried or passed laterally or backwards. Tackling is permitted but blocking is against the rules.
Teams can score the most points on tries, which are worth five points, and then add two more with a conversion kick. Penalty kicks and drop kicks are with three points. To score a try, a player must put the ball on the ground in what is defined as the “in-goal area” (similar to end zones in football).
Women’s rugby at BYU dates back to its establishment as a club in 2000. It became an official extramural sport at the university in 2015 (extramurals are defined as recreational activities where students compete against other schools). The program has developed a winning tradition through the years with national championship titles in 2019 and 2022.
The players do not wear pads or helmets.
“Last year I had a strained AC joint that’s in my shoulder but overall, rugby is safer than you think,” Nuño said. “There are a lot of rules about tackling and different techniques that you use. And because you’re aware of your body, you probably don’t go as hard as you would in football with all of the pads on.”
Nuño is not sure what might be in her future as to how the sport fits into her day-to-day life.
“If I have the time, I want to keep doing it in college and see how my schedule gets going as I’m about to graduate,” she said. “But I would definitely want to be involved in rugby in some way in the future, at least supporting it as a great sport.”
If not rugby, it’s a given that she’ll remain active in athletics.
“I still run on my own and I love lifting weights and I do the crossfit when I can,” Nuño said. “I did a crossfit competition a couple of years ago and that was really fun. I think in the future I’d want to keep doing that.”
