Parkside Rangers.

22 July, 2008 (10:34) | Parkside Rangers, Ulster Rugby

UW Parkside (A), situated between Milwaukee and Chicago.

The University of Wisconsin - Parkside is situated on the shores of Lake Michigan just outside Kenosha between Milwaukee and Chicago.

It is one of the smaller universities in the area with approximately 5,100 students but it does have a huge campus covering over 700 acres.

UW Parkside has 13 varsity teams and is a member of the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Valley Conference. The college colours are green, black and white and the sports teams go by the nickname Rangers.

The UW-Parkside Rugby team was founded sometime in the early 1970s but folded later in the decade. In 1997, led by Dr. John Murphy, the team was started up again with a single table at a recruitment fair. The team struggled with numbers and competitiveness at first but thanks to a lot of hard work, heart, and dedication, Parkside has established itself in the Wisconsin Rugby Union.

We first met some of the players from Parkside at the Justin Fitzpatrick rugby camp in Milwaukee along with their coach Todd Streeter and we were impressed by their attitude and athletic ability. We invited them along to our box at the Churchill Cup and after sampling good old Ulster hospitality the Parkside boys are all now switched on to Ulster Rugby and will be following the team from afar when the league campaign kicks off in early September.

As coach Todd Streeder says,

I know our guys are already looking forward to watching Ulster’s first matches at Ravenhill . We certainly feel like Ulster are our “big brother” club and look forward to getting together in our captain’s condo to watch the matches live anyway we can.

Maybe the 2BU Crew will do up a banner welcoming Parkside at our first televised match?

Parkside at last seasons Oshkosh.

UW-Parkside’s first league match is on Saturday 6th September, away to Milwaukee School of Engineering. We’ll post the details on the site. We’ll try and bring you up to date on the players and coaches before then.

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