Cal Varsity Rugby

Today's Cal team continues a legacy that began when rugby became the university's first sport played against an outside opponent. The Bears played four games that first year, compiling a 2-1-1 record.

Three years later, in 1885, the rules of the game shifted to those of American football, but in 1906 rugby returned as the school's main fall sport after the administration decided that football was becoming too dangerous. Over the next eight years Cal Rugby posted a 78-21-10 record under the direction of coaches Oscar Taylor and James G. Schaffer.

The year 1914 marked a temporary end to collegiate competition due to the First World War and the return of football as the university's primary fall sport. Rugby did not return to campus until 1931.

During the time athletes could not play for the university, Cal's aspiring ruggers found another arena for competition at the Olympics. The United States Rugby team brought home gold medals from both the 1920 and 1924 Olympic Games. California student Colby “Babe” Slater was a two-time Olympic gold medalist while nine other Cal players – George Davis, George Fish, Matt Hazeltine, Charles Mehan, Charles Tilden and James Winston in 1920, followed by Ed Graff, George Dixon and Ed Turkington in 1924 – also earned Olympic gold.

Graff returned to his alma mater in 1931 to serve as head coach of the Bears until 1937. It was during the Graff coaching era that Cal began competing for the World Cup. Named for the World newspaper of Vancouver, the World Cup became a symbol of the ongoing competition between the University of California and the University of British Columbia, much as the legendary Scrum Axe goes to the victor each year in the annual Cal-Stanford rugby match, a tradition that itself goes back over 100 years.

In 1938, a former Cal student from New Zealand, Miles "Doc" Hudson, took over for Graff and directed the Bears program for 37 years. Doc's teams posted an impressive won/loss record of 339-84-23.

The decade of the '50s saw the Bears compete against the New Zealand All Blacks, the Australia Wallabies and the Oxford-Cambridge combined team. Some believe that Coach Hudson's 1965 group -- whose 5-2-2 tour of Australia and New Zealand included a 25-14 win over Auckland University and an 8-8 draw with Queensland -- is one of the best Cal rugby teams ever assembled. Another strong candidate for best Cal side ever is the 1971 team, which went 5-4 on its six-week tour Down Under, including an 11-9 victory over Queensland University at Ballymore and a 20-17 win against ACT.

When Hudson eventually retired in 1975, former Cal rugger and captain of the 1971 touring team Ned Anderson assumed the reins of the program. When the sport started a national collegiate championship in 1980, Anderson's Cal side was the first to walk away with the national trophy. The Bears went on to win four consecutive national championships.

In 1984 one of Anderson's assistants, former player Jack Clark, succeeded him as the sixth head coach in team history. Coach Clark took the helm after a successful football and rugby career at Cal that was followed by post-collegiate rugby campaigns on the USA National Team. Clark's play as a United States Eagle earned him a spot on the World XV team that was invited to play the Welsh National Team during its centennial celebration in Cardiff, Wales, in 1980.

Jack Clark immediately took Cal back to the top of collegiate rugby after a one-year hiatus in 1984. The Golden Bears were once again crowned national champions in 1985 and '86.

The Bears' current era of success under Clark has included five Collegiate Rugby Championships in 7s, winning in 2013, '14, '15, '16 and '17; 24 national 15s titles (including 18 of the last 23, most recently in 2017); an impressive combined record of 37-1 against rugby powerhouses Army, Navy and Air Force in the 15-a-side game; 14 of the last 18 "World Cup" series vs. University of British Columbia; a domestic winning streak of 98 games from 1990-96 and a 70-game tear that lasted until 2003; a winning streak over U.S. collegiate competition that lasted 115 matches between April 2004 and May 2009; and a streak in 15s of 63 straight matches that ran from opening day in 2010 through Feb. 18, 2012.

Clark, who also served as head coach for the Collegiate All-America team from 1985-92, head coach of the USA National Team from 1993-99 and general manager for the national team from 1993-2003, ended his 35th spring as Cal head coach in 2017-18 as the winningest coach in program history with a 653-92-5 (.870) record in 15s. In 2014, Clark was inducted into the U.S. Rugby Hall of Fame; in 2016, he was enshrined into the Orange Coast College Hall of Fame and the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame.

The return of the sport to the 2016 Summer Olympics in the form of Rugby 7s, in which 2013 alumnus Danny Barrett featured for Team USA, has spurred further development in a segment of the game historically played in the offseason and as a pathway to the 15s national team. Although Cal has a long line of former players who have played for the U.S. National Sevens Team, its history of playing collegiate sevens is much shorter.

Clark, who also served as head coach for the Collegiate All-America team from 1985-92, head coach of the USA National Team from 1993-99 and general manager for the national team from 1993-2003, ended his 35th spring as Cal head coach in 2017-18 as the winningest coach in program history with a 653-92-5 (.870) record in 15s. In 2014, Clark was inducted into the U.S. Rugby Hall of Fame; in 2016, he was enshrined into the Orange Coast College Hall of Fame and the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame.

The return of the sport to the 2016 Summer Olympics in the form of Rugby 7s, in which 2013 alumnus Danny Barrett featured for Team USA, has spurred further development in a segment of the game historically played in the offseason and as a pathway to the 15s national team. Although Cal has a long line of former players who have played for the U.S. National Sevens Team, its history of playing collegiate sevens is much shorter.

The future of Cal rugby relies on today's student-athletes together with their supporters and the continued support of all those who have played a part its illustrious history. Over the last 20 years, a loyal group of Cal Rugby alumni have in large part endowed the sport at Cal through a fundraising effort entitled "Cal Rugby Forever."

Results of this drive have included the construction of the Doc Hudson Fieldhouse, named after the legendary coach, the home of team offices and alumni functions.

A group of stakeholders also funded the construction of Witter Rugby Field, the home pitch for Bears that looks out onto San Francisco Bay. The field is named after the Witter family, 14 of whom -- fathers, sons, grandchildren, uncles and cousins -- have played rugby for the Golden Bears.