The Manual That Built Gators Rugby

Before there was a website, there was a photocopier.

The first article in our Gators Rugby history series, published in conjunction with the launch of GatorsRugby.com. The complete 1993-94 club manual, digitized in full, is available below.

Somewhere in a filing cabinet, decades of Gators Rugby history sat folded into a stapled packet: a hand-inked gator on the cover, a constitution typed on a manual typewriter, and a glossary that defines "Rookie" as someone who hasn't played in two semesters and is on the hook for setting up the kegs. It is, in every sense, the club's founding document. It is also the reason GatorsRugby.com exists today.

Where It Started: 1969

The University of Florida Rugby Football Club was founded in 1969, the same year rugby quietly took root across the state. According to the club's own historical record, a group of Australian students at UF started a rugby club with no idea that, across the state, a similar effort was underway at the University of Miami. Neither knew the other existed until a few weeks later, when the Gainesville side made the trip to Miami for a match.

That first meeting between the two programs is remembered as the true starting point of organized rugby competition in Florida. When UF beat Miami in the first interstate match between the two schools, it set in motion the club structure that would eventually become the Florida Rugby Union in 1974, and the state championship pathway that exists to this day.

By the early 1990s, the sport had grown from eight clubs statewide to more than twenty, and Gators Rugby was in the thick of it: hosting tournaments, sending players through the U.S.A. Collegiate All-Star Program, and running a club constitution built to outlast any single roster.

The Manual: A Club's Voice, Preserved

The document we're sharing today is the 1993-94 edition of the club manual, compiled by Howard Ehrsam with help from faculty advisor Dr. Melvin Fried and honorary secretary Irma L. Smith. It reads less like a rulebook and more like the club talking to itself, and to whoever joined next.

It covers everything a new player or fan needed to know: a brief history of the sport, a state-by-state breakdown of Florida rugby, a tongue-in-cheek "Spectator's Guide" for people bluffing their way through their first match, a full rugby terms glossary, and the club's constitution, right down to the treasurer's duty to file reports with Student Government.

It closes with a line borrowed from Theodore Roosevelt about the credit belonging to the person in the arena, and a hand-drawn sign-off: "Keep on Ruckin'."

That voice, equal parts serious and self-aware, has carried through every era of the club since.

How Far We've Come

More than three decades later, that same club has grown into Gators Rugby: Men's and Women's programs competing in 15s and 7s, an independent alumni association, and a strategic plan built to carry the program through 2028. The tools have changed. What used to live in a stapled packet now lives in a CRM, a payments platform, and soon, a website of its own.

GatorsRugby.com is the next chapter of the same story that started in 1969: a club built by students, sustained by alumni, and worth writing down. This site, and this article series, exist to make sure it stays that way.

Read the Original Manual

The full 1993-94 club manual is preserved below in its original form, cover art and all.