About This Archive
Source material for this history comes from The Drew University archives. Issues of the Drew Acorn were recently digitized. The Drew Oak Leaves Yearbooks are not yet digitized, but Matthew Beland of the Drew Library staff was very helpful and rounded up the yearbooks of the era and scanned the pages. All have been used to create a chronology beginning in 1963 at the club's founding. Acorn articles were a function of what the student editorial staff thought about coverage of a club sport at the time. As rugby was new there was only one article from 1963 and there were none in 1964. As rugby on campus grew so did the coverage — three articles in Fall 1965, four in 1966, nine in 1967, twelve in 1968, seven in 1969, and then sadly only six from 1970 to 1973. Supplemented by yearbook pictures and the 50th Anniversary piece in the Drew magazine, there is a reasonable history of the Club during that period.
Compiled by the Drew Alumni Office, 2022
The Ol' Revelers
Drew Rugby Football Club played its first match against Princeton in the spring of 1963. In those early years the team went by the name the Ol' Revelers — a moniker that captured the spirit of the era. Drew was a member of the Eastern Rugby Union, one of only two unions in the United States at the time. The ERU comprised 33 college teams and another 25 major city clubs from New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. — a competitive landscape that would dwarf most regional unions today.
The laws of the game were different then. There were no substitutions, even for injury — one Rutgers match in April 1968 saw Drew hold on for a 14–13 victory with only 12 players remaining on the pitch as time expired. Lineouts involved no lifting; rucks could continue indefinitely so long as the ball was moving. And a try counted for only 3 points — the same as a penalty kick — with conversions worth 2. For the period Fall 1965 through Fall 1969, Drew's recorded A-side record was 29 wins and 11 losses — a 73% winning percentage against a field that included Army, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Rutgers, and Fordham.
This archive draws on issues of the Drew Acorn, scans of the Drew Oak Leaves yearbooks, original photographs recovered from the Acorn staff, and the 50th Anniversary feature in Drew magazine (Winter 2013). Records and photos compiled by Don Clarke, who played Fall 1965–Spring 1968 and again Spring 1971–Spring 1972 after service in the U.S. Army, graduating from Drew in 1972.
Source: Don Clarke '72 — Drew University Archives
| Season | W | L | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 1965 / Spring 1966 | 3 | 4 | Outscored opponents 109–47 (3-pt try era). Pres. Oxnam buys first official jerseys from Australia. |
| Fall 1966 | 4 | 0 | Defeated Westchester, Wesleyan (×2), and Rutgers. Captain: Ed Corrigan. |
| Spring 1967 | 8 | 1 | Semifinalists in the New York 7s — none had ever played 7s rugby before. Lost to Manhattan RFC 10–3 in semis. |
| Fall 1967 | 4 | 0 | Defeated Villanova, Cornell Med, Fairfield, Columbia. Captain: Jeff Waldman. |
| Spring 1968 | 5 | 3 | Beat Army A's 5–3; beat Rutgers 14–13 with 12 men on the field at the final whistle. Captain: Dwight Davies. |
| Fall 1968 / Spring 1969 | 5 | 3 | Beat Princeton 10–0 in Spring 1969. Captain: Dan Boyer. |
| TOTAL (Fall 1965–Fall 1969) | 29 | 11 | 73% winning percentage |
