Scrum and Get It

Athletic training students join injury prevention researchers on the rugby front lines

From the Spring 2025 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

Rugby tournament medical tents can resemble an emergency room triage station. Concussions, dislocations, sprains, fractures and muscle strains are commonplace in rugby, one of the world’s toughest sports. Three students from Sacred Heart’s Master of Science in athletic training program recently saw this firsthand at the 65th annual New York Sevens Invitational Rugby Tournament (NY7s) at Randall’s Island Sports Complex in New York.

“The sheer volume of patients in the medical tent was something I hadn’t encountered before,” Samantha McGann ’23, MSAT ’25 says of her experience at the NY7s. “Managing a flood of patients and learning to prioritize and triage injuries by severity was a major learning experience. It gave me a long glimpse into the high-caliber events I will be involved in as an athletic trainer, and I am incredibly grateful for that."

As rugby’s popularity continues to rise stateside since the U.S. Women’s Rugby Sevens Team claimed a last-second victory for bronze at the Paris Games, health professionals are working to prevent injuries in a sport that is essentially a form of tackle football played without pads. The NY7s is one of the largest and oldest rugby events in the Americas, with more than 155 teams and 1,700 athletes from as far as the Cayman Islands, Peru and the United Kingdom. The event’s large scale allows NY7s’ health care providers to experience a full spectrum of sporting injuries.

^{McGann and her fellow MSAT students were in good company for the NY7s on Randall's Island in New York, working with experts from subspecialties such as orthopedics, sports medicine, trauma and maxillofacial surgery.}

McGann previously completed smaller-scale clinical rotations at local colleges and high schools. At NY7s, she joined second-year MSAT classmates Gabriela (Gabby) Cali and Erin Regan in the busy tent, assisting in direct athlete care and gathering data for the pioneering HSS North American Rugby Registry. The registry is a project of the Rugby Research and Injury Prevention Group (RRIPG), a branch of the HSS’s Research Institute of Sport & Exercise, known as the RISE Institute, which are both led by NY7s tournament supervisor Dr. Victor Lopez, Jr. Head Athletic Trainer Erica Marcano, MS, ATC, CSCS, led triage in the tent, which included the tournament’s medical director, Dr. Answorth A. Allen of the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), and representatives of subspecialties such as orthopedics, sports medicine, trauma, maxillofacial surgery and neurointerventional care.

“I really appreciated having the doctors and senior ATs right next to us, to bounce ideas off and have them double-check things,” McGann says. “I also appreciated how much trust they had in us to practice our skills and techniques as students.”

A longtime former high-level rugby player himself, Lopez met McGann early in her high school rugby career in New York. At the time, Lopez was recruiting athletes to be part of the U.S. cohort of the RRIPG. He has presented his injury prevention research to the major rugby-playing nations at the International Olympic Committee.

“Dr. Lopez has always been a great clinical instructor to expose individuals to the rigors of sporting events and to really understand the care needs for our sport,” McGann says. “He has been one of the biggest advocates for improvements in USA Rugby and care details for rugby athletes.”

McGann has a passion for athletic training that grew out of the injuries she sustained during her time with Sacred Heart’s Division I Women’s Rugby team. Now pursuing her master’s in athletic training after earning a bachelor’s in exercise science, McGann aims to support athletes in all aspects of their performance, just as her athletic trainers did for her.

“I’m more confident now to work events like this in the future because I feel more prepared to do so,” McGann adds.

Future collaborations between the RRIPG, RISE Institute and Sacred Heart will allow students to continue to embed themselves in tournament tents to apply their skills and advance their knowledge. Lopez considers working with MSAT students as essential to injury prevention as working with athletes themselves.

“I think if we have more trained health care professionals knowledgeable in the sport, who are well aware of the injury trends and necessary standards, then we can provide a better level of care to the various playing cohorts,” Lopez says.