Quaker Valley Rugby Club takes root as sport’s popularity grows

By: Ray Fisher
Saturday, August 17, 2024 | 11:01 AM

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There’s a new sport in town that’s been growing at a steady pace.

Sean O’Neill of Sewickley Hills is co-founder of the Quaker Valley Rugby Club, which is partnering with the Premier Youth & Community Center in Sewickley.

“We just started the club earlier this year with a meeting with RugbyPA representatives who gave us valuable insight and guidelines and points of contact,” O’Neill said. “Then we met with QVSD athletic director Mike Mastroianni, who gave us approval to proceed as a club activity. We’ve been in contact with Mike from the start, and he’s been incredibly helpful and supportive of the new sport at Quaker Valley.

“To which we needed a staff member to sponsor the club and amazingly enough we found out there is a former rugby player on staff, Dr. Madeline Neely, a health and physical education teacher at Osborne who happily accepted our request and is our QVSD staff sponsor.”

Mastroianni provided necessary background information on forming a rugby club.

“I spoke to rugby club members last spring to review starting a club and all that is involved,” he said.

QV’s rugby club offers the sport for youth, middle school and high school students. The club already has a list of goals on its 2024-25 agenda.

“The club’s short-term goals are to get as much publicity out there as possible to let people know about the rugby club and to get enough kids at each level to field a team,” O’Neill said. “The long-term goals are to sustain the program from the youth level up and progress to the point that rugby becomes a PIAA-sanctioned sport.”

O’Neill is general manager and assistant head coach. He started playing rugby formally in the 1990s at Bethany College, then continued his career during his time in the United States Marine Corps.

“Rugby is a self-educating sport,” O’Neill said. “If you don’t know how to tackle, you will learn quickly or exit the game quickly. About five years ago, my oldest son Joe was just starting to play football and I helped coach his mighty mites team.

“I played football for Quaker Valley from first grade through graduation and onto Bethany College, where I then found the saving grace of rugby. But when I came back to coach, I was delighted to see USA Football using a New Zealand Rugby company, ATAVUS, teaching tackling back to USA Football coaches through its online certification program.”

O’Neill’s wife Kara is the QV rugby club’s secretary and early youth assistant coach.

“I thought with all the recent media attention for the USA women’s history-making Olympic bronze-medal win,” she said, “it would be a great time to really emphasize our mission of reaching out to local families who are unfamiliar with the sport and educate them about it, as well as providing a safe space to learn and try it out.

“With all the headlines that women’s rugby has been making in the recent weeks, we thought it would be nice to tie it into local interests.”

To get things started, the club held a series of clinics earlier this summer.

“Going forward, we have future goals of not only expanding the youth program but recruiting enough players to field both middle and high school boys and girls teams,” Kara O’Neill said.

The club is a bustling community organization that partnered with the Premier Youth CC family in June 2024. The club offers a variety of events and clinics throughout the year.

An upcoming event — Learn Rugby Open House — focuses on QV rugby for all ages and will be held Sept. 15 from 1-4 p.m. at the Fern Hollow Nature Center in Sewickley.

It is free and open to players of all ages and their parents. It will cover the history of rugby, safety aspects, different rugby formats and local rugby opportunities.

“We’re actually trying to recruit more high school players to form a team for the spring season,” Sean O’Neill said.

The O’Neill family has been actively involved with rugby in the western Pennsylvania area. Joe, 11, and Jack, 9, already play the sport.

Kennedy, 15, has competed for both West Pittsburgh and North Pittsburgh United and landed numerous accolades following her 2023-24 freshman year at Quaker Valley.

During spring rugby 7s, she helped lead North Pitt to the RugbyPA High School Division 2 Western Conference championship and was named rookie of the year by her North Pitt coaches and teammates.

She also was selected for the first RugbyPA High School Girls Division 2 Western All-Conference Team, as well as the Allegheny Rugby Union’s Under-19 Select Side.

And, as the saying goes, it’s been a case of “like father like daughter.”

Kennedy’s dad played for several USMC squads and was chosen for the All-Marine Corps Rugby Team in the early 2000s.

He ended his playing career with the Westmoreland Highlanders. He also was chosen for the Allegheny Rugby Union Men’s Select Side.

“Sean’s main motivation has been, at this point, that Kennedy’s had to play for club teams in the extended local area because our high school and community didn’t have a team,” Kara O’Neill said.

Quaker Valley Rugby Club has an experienced coaching staff led by Miles Loewy, a Leet Township resident who has both played and coached the sport at high levels. He formerly competed for England’s national team and England’s Exeter Premiership Rugby Club.

Stateside, Loewy has served as head coach for the Pittsburgh Harlequins men’s team and is one of the founders who helped build their home pitch, Founders Field in Cheswick.

The club participates in various events and competitions such as the RugbyPA Division 2 West Spring 7s. And the club has a social media presence, sharing updates and engaging with the community.

Rugby is one of the fastest growing youth sports in the country. According to World Rugby online, the object of the game is to carry the ball over the opponents’ goal line and force it to the ground to score.

That description is simple but complex. In order to go forward, the ball must be passed backwards. The ball can be kicked forward, but the kicker’s teammates must be behind the ball at the moment the ball is kicked.

And via USA Rugby, there are two primary forms of the game: Rugby 15s and Rugby 7s. Touch rugby, beach rugby, rugby 10s and rugby 12s are also iterations of the sport.

Though rugby players don’t wear pads or helmets, the techniques and rules of the sport make impacts safer. Players are taught to use their arms and shoulders when making contact with opponents, earning serious repercussions for any contact above the shoulders and other dangerous styles of play.

All youth and high school rugby programs in Pennsylvania are run by authorized state-level organizations under the umbrella of USA Rugby. All coaches must take a coaching course to ensure they teach safe tackling, have training in concussion management, are Safesport accredited and are background checked.

To register for the QV rugby club or for more information, call or text Sean O’Neill at 412-292-9181, email qvrugby@gmail.com or visit on Facebook at Quaker Valley Rugby Club or on Instagram at @qv_rugby_club.