Adrian College Men's Rugby Has Apparently Canceled All Its Games
Adrian College Men's Rugby Has Apparently Canceled All Its Games
The Adrian College men's program appears to have abandoned its fall season.
Adrian went through some serious problems last season after conflict between the players and the administration led to a number of players walking away from the team, and consequently being stricken from the team's roster.
Adrian then ended up canceling and memory-holing the second half of ifs CRAA D1A 15s season, and ultimately played a few 7s tournaments as a precursor to joining NCR for this fall. (CRAA leadership offered coaching help to Arian to assist with player retention and buy-in, but were reportedly rebuffed.)
But that didn't fix any of the issues within the school's relationship with players, and sources say that attendance at practice was been spotty at best.
Last week's fixture with Thomas More was canceled and Adrian actually deleted the matchup from their website as if it was never supposed to happen. That game, however, is still listed as of September 20 on NCR's scheduling app:
(Below are two screenshots from the app laid out side-by-side. We cut out the ads because they mess with the alignment of the games.)
Now the remaining four games on Adrian's schedule , at least, was a non-conference game. The Big Rivers Conference games on the schedule can't be so easily deleted. So they have been listed on the team's website as canceled.
See the screengrab here:
For details on what led to this see here:
Adrian College Program in Jeopardy as Players, Administration Clash
Adrian Follow-Up: Forfeits Are Being Memory-Holed
Ultimately, this could have been predicted. The issues that prompted Adrian's forfeits last spring remain the same issues. The personalities involved remain the same. For NCR and NCR teams it was, unfortunately, not a win-win to get Adrian to switch over from CRAA. Adrian still had problems, NCR were getting not great membership boost other than another name on their list, and the Big Rivers now has to handle a season where one of the teams in the Western Division isn't playing.
Since each team only gets three conference matches anywhere, it's a massive loss for Thomas More, Rio Grande, and Iowa Central at this late stage.
