After starting 2-1, the Sacramento State Men’s Rugby Club is vying for the one-and-only playoff spot in its league this season.

“As of right now, we’re still on track and still fighting for a playoff seed,” said captain Craig Manno. “We feel really good and strong coming into the season.”

Sacramento State is in the Division I, Northern California Section. The team is matched up with Stanford, Santa Clara and Chico State and will be playing them each twice this season.

In years past, Sac State’s league has included teams from Cal and UC Davis. With the development of the new Premier League, all of those teams have left Sac State’s league and it has left the door wide open for the Hornets to advance to the playoffs.

“We got put in a weird situation this year,” Manno said. “They took a lot of the heavy hitters out of our regular season league so it has left us a lot of opportunities to go pretty far in playoffs and contend for a state championship.”

Head coach Mason Gunn said, “The Premier League was created in hopes for better competition for the teams in the upper echelon.”

Under NCAA rules, any team that can afford to travel across the country and handle the level of competitiveness can join the Premier League.

Sac State didn’t have that kind of money, Gunn said.

“There’s only going to be one team or maybe two selected in the Premier League division, so why spend all the money to travel to different schools like Washington and Southern California,” Gunn said. “We thought that it would be better to stay in Division I.”

UC Davis joined the Premier League but has already lost to Sac State twice this year in pre-season play.

“We’re a competitive team and we feel that we can compete with those teams in that higher league,” Manno said.

Club president Chris Turner said the team’s competitiveness is what makes it so special.

“We’re motivated 110 percent,” Turner said. “We only have a certain amount of games throughout the year so we make every practice and game count like it’s our last.”

The team has a total of six regular season games in the spring 2011 season.

One of the difficulties the team has to overcome moving forward is simply a lack of players.

Every weekend the team is required to field two teams, a varsity and a junior varsity, so the team would need about 30 players &- not accounting for injuries and players getting fatigued. Only the varsity games, however, count toward the overall record for playoffs.

“Everybody gets to play based on your ability and experience in rugby,” Gunn said. “For guys who come out to practice, we make sure everybody gets in the game and gets some experience.”

Manno said the team is always hurting for numbers.

“You have to remember that rugby is a pretty tough sport and it’s also a long season,” Manno said. Right now we’ve been able to cover it, but sometimes guys are forced to play two games.”

Manno said if the team were able to get more players, it would help with its issues on the field, but could also help financially as well.

The rugby team is a club is open to all Sac State students with fee of $150 to join. No rugby experience is required and the club encourages participants from all athletic backgrounds to come out and play.

“Since we are a club sport, we get a lot of first-year guys that have never really played rugby,” Turner said. “It’s a whole different game. Getting those guys acclimated to the sport and understanding the game is the only thing we really need to work on.”

To get to the playoffs and eventually to the State Championships, the team has to go through the biggest rival in its league, Chico State.

Chico State and Sac State will play each other twice this season.

“It’s going to be really big game for us,” Turner said. “Usually teams are very evenly matched and it’s usually a real fight throughout the whole game.”

Manno said what makes this rivalry unique is that most of the players on the Chico State actually are from the Sacramento area. Many players on the Sac State team know the players on the Chico team and some are even friends off the field.

Not much can be said about their relationship on the field.

“This could essentially determine the rest of the season,” Manno said. “To guarantee playoffs, we almost have to win every game from this point on.”

The team suffered a loss to Stanford in its first game of season, but has won its last two games after beating rival Chico State last Saturday.

The next game will be a rematch with Stanford on Saturday.

You can reach Anthony Honrade at [email protected]