NTU Rugby Team Gloriously Won the Championship in
National Collegiate Rugby Match

National Taiwan University's Rugby team participated in the National Collegiate Sports Meet this year. The games were played at the Chang Jung Christian University from April 24th to May 1st, and the NTU won the championship with five straight wins. In the first four matches, NTU's Rugby team beat the National Ocean University, the National Cheng-chi University, the Chinese Military Academy, and the National Defense University by the scores of 21 to 17, 58 to 7, 22 to 6 , and 58 to 7 respectively. For the championship game, our team had many injured players, but every one fought the battle long and hard. With a unified spirit, our team finally beat National Cheng-kung University by a score of 27 to 14, and won the national championship.

What is especially amazing about the Rugby team is that most of the members had never touched rugby before they entered National Taiwan University. In order to participate in the annual National Collegiate Sports Meet, these players utilized their spare time and trained for a whole year under the leadership of Captain Hung-Yuan Wen, who is a senior at the Department of Civil Engineering. Before the games started, the players gathered together for a one-month intensive training. Besides the training of skills, team work, cooperation, physical prowess, and the honing of the will to win accounted for the final victory.

In addition, that the NTU team won the championship this year is largely attributable to the prioritized sports team development plan proposed by President Si-chen Lee and the Athletic Department two years ago. The President was convinced that, for a university to pursue excellence, the emphasis should not be placed on teaching and research alone, but the development of culture and sports was equally important. So about two years ago, the President asked the Athletic Department to come up with a plan for prioritized sports development. Since rugby had a long and outstanding historical legacy in National Taiwan University, and since rugby is a sport that lends itself to the display of teamwork, so it received special subsidy from the University under the prioritized sports development plan, which allowed the rugby team to have sufficient funding and resources for intensive training, resulting in NTU winning the championship. Especially worth mentioning is that, with the subsidy from the prioritized sports development plan, the NTU Rugby team went to Hong Kong last September, and held matches against the universities in Hong Kong. Besides showing that NTU students are adept at academics and sports, the Hong Kong trip also served to enhance the cohesion among the players and to promote their team spirit.

The NTU Rugby team is one of the sport teams of NTU that has the longest standing historical legacy. Its history is now over 60 years. As the game of rugby lends itself specially to the display of physical prowess, determination, courage and honor, over the years it has produced many distinguished alumni. Take the championship game, for example, many of the players were injured, but they still fought with an undaunted spirit, which was indicative of the inheritance of the NTU rugby tradition. The majority of the players never touched rugby before college, but after a year's training and drilling, they were able to win the national championship. This amazing feat not only proves that NTU students are adept at academics and sports, but that they have good team work and undaunted spirits as well.