It was love at first scrum for Smyrna girl who is among nation's top rugby players

Reaghan King’s summer vacation isn’t a typical itinerary of trips to the beach or pool, visits with classmates and making money working a part-time job.The rising Smyrna High senior’s adventures include several excursions overseas and continuing to hone her skills as one of the nation’s best youth female rugby players.

In the meantime, she’ll also stay busy gathering with friends, making and selling candles from her own Roo’s Aromas business and extinguishing more frightening flames as a Clayton Fire Company volunteer.

It’s her rugby talents, however, that have earned King attention well outside of Kent County.

King’s sports interests have always swayed toward games with physical contact. She initially played tackle football and was on boys lacrosse teams because there were no available options to play the far-more-tame girls game. King has also wrestled and partaken in the martial art of jiu-jitsu.

Five years ago, the now-17-year-old King’s quest for rough-and-tumble athletic opportunities landed her in Rugby Delaware’s rookie program.

It was love at first scrum.

That led to stints with more formidable club teams, including the Doylestown Dragons in Buck County, Pennsylvania, that provided better competition and more exposure.

King was good enough to earn spots on regionally and nationally built rosters for events in Ireland, where she’ll travel for the second time later this month, and recent competitions in Germany and Austria with the North American Lions, a select team of top players.

“It’s such a cool experience,” she said, with her recent European tour also including a side trip to Venice, Italy. “… I think back to five years ago and never thought that this is where I would be. Just to see how far it’s taken me, and where it’s still gonna take me.’’

Soon King, who carries a 4.1 grade-point average, will plunge into the college admissions process. Army West Point tops her list of potential destinations along with the Ivy League schools. All have varsity women’s rugby teams that would likely love to add a player with her ability.

Why rugby?

King played in the Smyrna Pop Warner football program for several years. But when she reached middle school, she knew it was time for something else.

“The boys were growing and growing and I was still 5-foot and 115 pounds,” she said. “The size difference was like, ‘OK, I gotta find something else.’”

Reaghan’s mother, Katie, is originally from the San Francisco Bay area. When her daughter was searching for a new venue to unleash her athletic talents, Katie suggested rugby.

“On the men’s side, Cal-Berkeley, Saint Mary’s, those are perennially the really strong teams,” Katie said. “They’re to rugby like what Johns Hopkins is to lacrosse.”

In February of 2018, Reaghan went to Dover for her first rugby practice and was immediately smitten. She got to tackle people, just like in football, and also appreciated rugby’s simplicity that made learning the rules easy.

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“After the first practice I was like ‘This is it. This is what I want,’ ” she recalled. “. . . I always preferred the rougher sports and was used to being the only girl on my team.”

King enjoyed her rugby indoctrination so much she wanted to attend a summer rugby camp. She chose the one at West Point run by Army coach Bill LeClerc, a former national team player who has also been a U.S. women’s team coach.

“That was my first experience playing higher-level rugby, a little bit more competitive,” she said. “I was only going into seventh grade but I was playing with high schoolers . . . I saw the progress I was making and thought ‘I could be like them one day.’ That’s when I fell in love with the sport.”

Growth in the game

King played on teams in Delaware, as well as Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and Severna Park, Maryland, before landing in 2019 with the Doylestown club, which King said has produced a bevy of college and national-level players. She and her mother or father, Jim, typically make the 100-mile drive each way once a week for practices, with games on Sundays there and at other rugby clubs throughout the Mid-Atlantic area.

Her play has earned King spots on various select teams, including Atlantis Rugby, the Eagle Impact Rugby Academy and the North American Lions, which “for U-18 is about as close to a national team as you can get,” King said.

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That included both the seven- and 15-player versions of rugby, played on the same size field but with much shorter games for the seven-a-side version. Rugby debuted at the Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro with the seven-player game.

“I was playing at the highest level that I could and, through that, getting the exposure to play at even higher levels,” she said.

Frequent trips overseas

The now 5-foot-4 King was on an Eagle Impact Rugby Academy squad that played three 15-a-side games in Ireland last summer, with a return trip later this month coming. King feels she’s slightly better suited for the 15-player game, though she excels at both.

In June, she was on North American Lions team that competed in the Heidelberg Sevens in Germany and the United World Games, also for seven-player games, in Austria. The Lions won both events.

King usually plays the two prop or one hooker position, which she compares to being on the offensive line in American football. They are the three players who form the front wall in the scrum, the mass of rugby humanity in which both teams lock arms in a head-to-head restart for possession of the ball, which is kicked out from beneath.

“It’s definitely a showcase of power,” King said.

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She also plays the center position located behind the scrum that often requires running with the ball and lateraling it to others.

“I’m definitely pretty aggressive with the ball, which definitely helps me,” King said.

Among the best

At Smyrna High, where the football and field hockey teams won DIAA championship last year and many others excel, King is an athletic standout, even though few may even realize it because it’s in a sport not played by many high schools. In Delaware, only Salesianum and Archmere play boys rugby.

On Wednesday, King traveled to Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for a U.S. under-18 select camp in which she’ll hone her skills and develop new ones with high-level coaches. U.S. national teams are under-20, under-23 and the senior, or elite, squad.

The U.S. is hosting the 15-player Rugby World Cup for men in 2031 and women in 2033, which is a long-term goal for King.

“It’s really cool because, again, seeing how far the sport has taken me and how my hard work has paid off,” she said.

Many interests, talents

In addition to her athletic exploits, King also has her candle business to help financially support her sports travels, excels academically and was Clayton Fire Company Junior Firefighter of the Year in 2021 and 2022.

Being a firefighter has provided an opportunity to serve her community, King said, but also develop important skills that include staying composed in stressful times and making quick decisions. That has helped her on the rugby field.

Kevin Wilson, who has spent nearly 50 years as a Clayton firefighter including time as chief, said King "sets a high bar" in every aspect of her teen-age life and is amazingly goal-oriented for someone her age.

"Reaghan is an exceptional young woman," Wilson said. "… When this kid stepped into the firehouse, you just knew. She radiated energy. She always had a smile. I've never seen the kid get down. You could tell this kid is gonna be a leader, she's gonna go places."

Often those places are for rugby games in far-off lands. Firefighters will sometimes stream King's games and gather to watch her play at the fire station.

“She has a tendency to go hard in whatever she does.” Katie King said of her daughter. “… She focuses on whatever she’s involved in. I always tell her ‘I wish I had as many hours in the day as you have.’ ”

Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Smyrna's Reaghan King among nation's top female rugby players