Seth Erwin said he grew up like a lot of kids in Western Pennsylvania: with a passion for football. He was a standout at Kiski Area and, once he graduated, was prepared to continue playing football in college.

But during his senior year with the Cavaliers, he suffered a compound fracture in his arm, and that, he said, scared off many of the schools that were recruiting him. Even though his football dreams were dashed, Erwin still was keen on one of his suitors, IUP, so he enrolled there and went about his days as a “normal” student.

A chance encounter on campus changed his life. Instead of football, he would find his path in rugby.

Now, Erwin, 41, is the coach of IUP’s 15s and 7s club rugby teams. On Dec. 15, he guided the 15s to a second national championship in three seasons. IUP captured the National Collegiate Rugby Division II title with a 38-29 win over Northern Iowa.

IUP also has two national championships in 7s under Erwin — 7s features seven men on a side and is played in the spring; 15s has 15 men on a side and is played in the fall — in 2022 and 2023.

“I always want to be the best at what I do,” Erwin said, “or at least be in the conversation as someone who is really good.”

Erwin said it was during a health class at IUP that the guy in front of him, noticing Erwin’s size, turned around and asked him if he was interested in playing rugby. Erwin admitted he hadn’t the slightest idea what rugby was about.

“But you’re telling me I get to hit people,” Erwin responded. “Sure, why not? So I went out that first practice, got to hit people without pads on and fell in love. And then it became an obsession.”

IUP’s rugby club was founded in 1974. The team doesn’t offer scholarships — though, Erwin said, players can receive a couple hundred dollars to put toward books — and is funded almost entirely through alumni donations. The school, Erwin said, provides a small operating budget and helps pay for a portion of the travel to the national tournament.

Under the direction of Dr. Larry Bouma, IUP’s program began to flourish, finishing No. 4 in the nation in 2000. Bouma now serves as an assistant under Erwin, who took over the post during the 2017-18 school year.

Erwin had been coaching Kiski Valley rugby since 2012, and the team was coming off a state championship when he decided to take the IUP job.

“I knew I would be turning over a good (Kiski Valley) program to the next person,” he said.

Erwin, who co-owns a beer distributor in Apollo, coaches IUP on a volunteer basis, but he handles the job with the fervor of a professional. And there were a number of hurdles he had to clear to build the program to its current state.

In that regard, the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 was a blessing in disguise. The team shut down for about 18 months, and, in that time, most of the players graduated.

Erwin said he took it as an opportunity to hit the reset button, starting with what he called a “culture change.”

“Focusing more on rugby as opposed to the social life that came with being a college athlete,” is how he described the program’s new mantra. By the spring of 2022, Erwin had assembled the roster that eventually won the 7s national title.

That in itself was a challenge. As a 15s player in his heyday, Erwin said he knew relatively little about coaching the 7s style.

“I had to study the heck out of 7s to be able to coach it,” he said. “It’s a huge field with minimal players, and it’s a lot of running. It’s really designed for the fast kids. I was a bigger guy, so chasing small, fast guys wasn’t my thing.

“We always joke that we get the fat kids in the fall and the fast kids in the spring.”

In truth, the pool of players from which the rosters are created is one in the same. Erwin has 28 players in the program, 26 from the Pittsburgh area and several of those from the A-K Valley.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Erwin has a couple of “football defectors” on his roster each season. Because of his own football background and subsequent conversion to rugby, he knows exactly how to sell the sport to other ex-football players.

Among his top players are RJ Beach and fellow Burrell grad Dom Holmes, who was the 2023 15s finals MVP. Erwin calls Holmes “maybe the best Division II college rugby player in the country” because he has the size and speed to excel in 15s and 7s.

The process has been slow, but Erwin said the club has gained a nice following around campus. Besides being a sport that isn’t widely seen in the U.S., rugby has had to overcome a stigma of being “barbaric.” After all, the players are hitting each other at full speed with no pads and minimal — if any — head protection.

Erwin, however, said rugby is a very technical sport, particularly when it comes to hitting. In his playing days, he said he put his head in the wrong spot once or twice, and that was all it took for him to refine his style of play.

“You know contact is coming,” he said. “It’s not like football when you could be running down the field and get blindside blocked. In rugby, if the contact is going to happen, you’re prepared. You’re either making a tackle, or you’re running the ball. There’s never any unassumed contact.

“Unlike football, you can’t use your head as a battering ram because that’s going to hurt you, too.”

Soon, IUP will be ramping up for 7s, and the team will be going for its third title in four years. For those still on the fence about the appeal of rugby — either as players or fans — Erwin’s message is simple: Don’t knock it until you try it.

“Organized chaos is a good way to explain it,” he said. “There’s a lot of rules that people take awhile to understand. … It’s so fun to watch. I was hooked from that first day.”

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