Phil Stopher
The Minotaurs in the process of winning a ruck, recovering the ball after a tackle.
Members of the Madison Minotaurs Rugby Football Club, the city’s International Gay Rugby team, often don’t have the resources to travel to tournaments out East or in Canada. So they created their own.
“IGR has a lot of regional tournaments, and they’re all pretty far from Madison,” says Drew Briski, the 26-year-old geospatial analyst and cartographer who also is director of the Madtown Scrumdown, the first-ever major tournament hosted by the Minotaurs. “I wanted to create a tournament that appealed to Midwest teams.”
The inaugural event is scheduled for Saturday, May 12, at the two-pitch Wisconsin Rugby Sports Complex, 4064 Vilas Road in Cottage Grove, home of Madison United Rugby. Members from six IGR teams — Columbus (Ohio) Coyotes, Columbus (Ohio) Kodiaks, Milwaukee Beer Barons, Minneapolis Mayhem, St. Louis Crusaders and the Minotaurs — will participate. Some teams aren’t able to field full 15-man teams because of travel conflicts or injuries, so the Coyotes and Crusaders will merge for tournament play, as will the Beer Barons and Kodiaks.
The tournament follows a four-team round-robin format, and competition begins at 10 a.m. Admission for spectators is free, and pre-tournament and post-tournament festivities will be hosted at FIVE Nightclub, 5 Applegate Court. “Part of what makes IGR different from other rugby clubs is that we try to do more social activities,” Briski says.
The Minotaurs were established in 2007 as the first IGR team in Wisconsin, and the club has participated in tournaments all over the world. Briski says membership is about 70% gay or bisexual men and 30% straight or non-gay-identifying men. The club participates in spring and fall seasons and likely will post a call for new members this summer on Facebook.
Madison’s 32-man roster is down to 25 for the Madtown Scrumdown, thanks to injuries. Briski — who played several sports but never gave rugby a try until he joined the Minotaurs in 2015 — has been out since last fall when he tore his ACL.
The Minotaurs are among the 10 members of Madison United Rugby, and Madison is one of the few rugby communities in the country with its own dedicated rugby fields.
Briski hopes to make the Madtown Scrumdown an annual event and possibly host other IGR tournaments. First, though, he needs to get through the inaugural year. “This is definitely an experiment for us,” Briski says. “Other teams in different parts of the country have great tournaments with a lot of fun. Why not us?”
