The Beanpot. Boston's elite inter collegiate sports tournament. A time when Bob Uecker's words that "Sports carve out their own wonderful universe" come to life. A time when the best come to play. And, of course, a time for rugby.

Rugby? Isn't that football's stepchild, a game only played in Her Majesty's Old Empire, a game that is an imperfect cross between handball and soccer and other very un-American sports? Well, at Harvard, nothing could be further from the truth. Rugby as a club sport is alive and thriving, and today's rugby's Beanpot takes place at Soldier's Field.

And like all Beanpots, rugby's version takes on a special place in the players minds. Bragging rights, more than anything else, is what's most at stake for the participants.

"The Beanpot is a matter of pride," says junior Co-captain Chris Baker.

The Beanpot consists of the four traditional colleges--Harvard, Boston College, Boston University and North eastern. And this year's tournament takes on even extra Crimson significance because it will be played on Harvard's home turf.

After the official fall season, Harvard rugby plays only unofficial games and tournaments in the spring. The rugby national tournament is played based on fall and winter records. Although the Crimson possessed a solid 7-4 record during that time, that was not enough to win the northeast region and go on to qualify for the national tournament.

But it's not as if only the presence of a Beanpot legitimates rugby. Rugby, like some Harvard sports, has a rich story to tell.

An All-Inclusive Club

Rugby is not really played at the varsity level in the U.S., but its status as a club sport has not stopped its growth. At Harvard, anyone who tries out for the team automatically makes it, and the team just creates different sides to match skill levels.

So the men's team often fields an A, B, C and even D side. This purely democratic system hardly reduces the level of competition, however. As anyone who has seen a rugby game can attest to, the higher level teams are made up exclusively of people who are very good athletes. Most of them played varsity sports in high school.

"Most of the people who play on A side played sports in high school," Baker says. "Only two or three [including Baker] played rugby before Harvard, but the level of play is very competitive."

Because rugby is only a club sport, it receives no funding from the athletic department. Thus the players must finance the team and all its expenses. What this also means is that the club must pay for the coach (Al Baker), and that the Co-captains (Baker and Chris Matarese) pick which players play on which side. Like any club, men's rugby has officers that run it administratively. Junior Steven Raizes is currently the president.

Due to the complications that arise out of such a self-finance structure, it is often difficult to arrange trips. Only A side (and some substitutes) went to the Cherry Blossom Tournament in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

"It was efficient to take two vans to D.C. for the Cherry Blossom," Baker explains.

But, if anything, the extra effort needed to sustain the team off the field only makes the players tighter on the field. A side won the third division championship in the Cherry Blossom, and finished third in the Ivy League Tournament two weeks ago.