As the All-Army rugby team trained for the Armed Forces Rugby Championship, which begins today and concludes Saturday at noon on Stewart-Watson Field, some players said they felt nostalgic about the tournament, knowing next year will be much different.

Many of the players on this year’s squad will not be returning next year, or may never play on an All-Army team again.

Ken Wetherill, Fort Benning’s director of sports, said the Armed Forces tournament format will change starting in 2012 from 15-player rugby to sevens rugby, which is an entirely different game altogether. Sevens rugby favors players who possess speed and agility rather than strength. Quick players are able to get to outside edges with less resistance, which means scoring in sevens rugby is often much higher than traditional rugby. Halves are only seven minutes as opposed to 40. 
 There’s also no place for the positions that put emphasis on strength and muscle,” All-Army flanker Colin O’Donnell said.

“I’m not playing sevens,” he said. “You’ll always hear forwards say sevens is a back’s game … the (forward) position is very prejudice against sevens.”

Wetherill said the format will change because sevens rugby was voted to become an Olympic sport and will debut at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. The new format will allow athletes to train for the Olympics through the World Class Athlete Program.

“The function of the All-Army sports program is to funnel people to higher level competition,” Wetherill said. “The minute sevens was voted into the Olympics, we knew 15s would have to be switched.”

But despite the disappointment of the change, Army now has many good reasons motivating the team to play at a higher level.

“It would be awesome because we would be the last to put our flag in the ground and say this is ours,” O’Donnell said. “We’d be the last to win the (15s) rugby tournament.”

All-Army coach and team captain Clint Olearnick said he has played or coached on the Army team since 2005, except during a year in which he was deployed, and he has never beaten Air Force, which has won the championship each year since 2003.

“That’s our No. 1 goal,” he said. “Playing them for so long and never beating them, it’s one of those things. I definitely want to take it home this year and get after those guys.

“We believe this is our year and that’s going to be our mantra throughout. (Air Force) has been playing together for a long time … but I think they’re on a downslide because some of their perennial players are starting to go away. We’re very cohesive as a team. We have a shared vision. We know what we want to do and accomplish. This is our last year to do it.”

Olearnick, who will also be playing the No. 8 position, is coaching for the second year now after Army finished third last year behind Air Force and Coast Guard.

“Being a coach and a player is going to be difficult, but I think I’ve put some systems in place that will lessen the difficulty significantly,” he said.

This year will also be the final year in which Fort Benning can host the Armed Forces tournament until 2027. Each branch of the military is able to host the tournament for four years until it rotates to another, Wetherill said. Air Force is slated to host the beginning of the sevens rugby era in 2012.

“It’s an honor for us to host the last year of 15s,” Wetherill said. “Rugby has been our favorite sport. The Olympics is the pinnacle of sports. If 15s does get voted into the Olympics, I guarantee the possibility of it coming back as an All-Army sport. I don’t know if we’d see it again without it being an Olympic sport.”