How Aspen adopted rugby union
Best known as a celebrity magnet in winter, this Colorado ski town also likes to play rough.
The endless parade of fine-dining restaurants and designer boutiques I’m prepared for. The labradoodle trotting down Aspen’s cobblestone streets dressed in a Moncler ski jacket doesn’t look out of place, either. And the sight of milky ski runs pouring down the face of Aspen Mountain matches exactly the picture in my mind. What I’m not expecting to find in this upmarket Colorado ski resort is a snow-blanketed rugby field.
Wagner Park occupies prime real estate opposite the Limelight Hotel in the centre of town (where housing goes for up to $US8000/$11,500 a sq foot). It’s the home ground of the Gentlemen of Aspen, perhaps the most unlikely – and the most unfathomably successful – rugby team in the US. How did it happen? I don’t have to look far to find the answer. Team captain Simon Dogbe works a few doors down from the Limelight Hotel where I’m staying, within drop-kicking distance of Wagner Park. The Englishman arrived in Aspen in 2001, in the Gentlemen’s heyday.
“It was incredible,” he says. “We were like the New York Yankees of rugby, full of big-name players and beating everyone. It’s hard to believe, in a way.”
The team was formed in 1967, when Aspen was chosen as the venue for a new rugby tournament called Ruggerfest. Keen for some local representation, a newly arrived Englishman named Steve Sherlock did the rounds at local bars, recruiting rugby-playing ski bums from all over the world. Borrowing some red and black jerseys from the basketball team and emblazoning them with a giant Aspen leaf, they christened themselves the Gentlemen of Aspen, in honour of the Oscar Wilde quote: “Rugby is a barbarians’ game played by gentlemen. Soccer is a gentlemen’s game played by barbarians.” The team wears the same colours and logo today.
Things got serious in the late 1980s, when top rugby players from around the world discovered they could come to Aspen and ski during the winter, then stay on to play rugby in the summer. In 1997, the team claimed the national title and went on to win the next five national championships in a row.
Australians have always been an integral part of the team. Queenslander Cameron McIntyre arrived in Aspen in 1993 and never left. He’s now the coach. “A lot of people come here not knowing there’s an opportunity to play rugby, then spot the posts and start asking around. It doesn’t take long for them to find their tribe,” he says.
Dogbe agrees. “Rugby players are the same breed everywhere. You turn up with a pair of boots and before you know it someone’s giving you a couch to sleep on and a hook-up for a job. Especially in Aspen, which has always been a melting pot of cultures.”
The advent of the professional era around 2015 meant the Gentlemen no longer had the resources to compete at the top tier, but the passion hasn’t diminished. The team currently plays in the Rocky Mountain Rugby League, taking on fellow ski resort towns such as Steamboat Springs, Vail and Breckenridge (otherwise known as Gentlemen of the Blue Goose). Ruggerfest is still the highlight of the rugby calendar.
“To play on that field with that mountain behind you is just magic,” says Dogbe. “Everyone who steps foot on that field understands how special it is.”
Up to 4000 people are expected to crowd the sidelines for this year’s tournament in September, when the Gentlemen will try for their third title in a row. McIntyre says it’s the best time of year to visit the town, with autumn colours ripening and the warm-weather activities still in full swing. “There’s a reason our players come for the winter and stay for the summer. And Ruggerfest still has the best atmosphere of any tournament, anywhere.”
IN THE KNOW
The 55th Aspen Ruggerfest takes place September 14-17 at Wagner Park and Rio Grande Field in Aspen. Free entry.
Ricky French was a guest of Travelplan and Colorado Ski Country.
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