Will Sherman may be the future of US rugby, but his roots are in the game’s American past. The 22-year-old standout second-row forward for Anthem Rugby Carolina in Major League Rugby is the son of Wade Sherman, a member of a champion Cal Berkeley team that included Mark Bingham, who on 11 September 2001 was one of the Flight 93 passengers who fought their hijackers and kept it from reaching Washington.
“There was a super old photo that my dad pulled up, and the first time I heard that story was from him,” Sherman said. “He was like, ‘That guy standing to my left is an American hero.’”
Sherman “loves telling the story” of how his dad found rugby – which after all is the reason he found it too .
Sherman senior “went to Australia when he was 14 or 15”, his son said, speaking from Charlotte, North Carolina, where Anthem play. “He and his buddies went to the beach at Bondi, and they saw these guys throwing the ball around, tackling each other, and they were like, ‘Wow, that looks like the most fun thing ever.’ They joined in. When my dad got back to northern California, he found a high school team, then he played at Cal for two years, then at BYU [in Utah] two more. And then he was my first coach.”
That was with a kids’ team in Salt Lake City, after which Sherman played at East High School, part of Utah’s long-established rugby scene. One reason Utah has that scene is that lots of Pacific Islanders live there.
“The rugby roots run deep with that community,” Sherman said. “Most of my friends growing up were of that background, most of my teammates too.”
The Islander influence may also explain why Sherman grew into a second-row who at 6ft 4in lacks inches on some monsters but hits hard and can also play flanker.
He had to learn to do so. He “honestly didn’t love rugby when I was really young, when I started playing tackle, because I was getting beat up every weekend. But I think it was good for me. It’s important to play that physically hard sport and go through those trials and tribulations, get beat up a little bit, skin your knees. I think there’s a lot of value in that. You learn the qualities of rugby. You need to be tough to play, which is a big reason I love it. There is so much respect involved. It’s why you break bread together afterwards, because everyone acknowledges that you put your body on the line for the game. That’s definitely a value I inherited from rugby culture in Utah. And once I started to kind of grow into my body and get bigger and a bit stronger, I started to have more fun.”
Sherman had fun in his MLR debut last weekend, against the California Legion. He spent about 50 minutes on the field, about 10 off it because, as any good second row may, he saw yellow, for persistent infringements. In terms of dealing them out, he made 19 tackles. That was impressive but it was light next to the 36 he made in just one game last year, his third and final outing for Randwick, a storied club in Sydney, Australia.
How did he get there? From East High, Sherman went to UCLA. The transition was tough; though Bruins rugby doesn’t have varsity status, it is still a serious business.
“You don’t realize how much of a commitment it is,” he said. “That’s the hard part. You basically are a varsity sport. You’re putting in the hours that anyone does on a varsity sport, but you don’t get the same privileges because you’re a club. You’re getting worse practice times. Other teams get priority on the fields. You’re getting pushed around. I think UCLA’s biggest hurdle is admissions. It being such a prestigious university, it’s very hard to get in on academic merit. So that was a huge challenge for our coach, Harry Bennett, but he did a great job.”
Bennett is Australian, once a full-back with New York in MLR. His work helped Sherman make last summer’s US under-23 tour to South Africa, for which another influential coach was in charge: Agustin Cavalieri. The Argentinian “Coach Cuca”, once a pro second row, is now in charge at Anthem.
Anthem are backed by World Rugby as a vehicle to develop American talent ahead of the US-hosted 2031 World Cup but they struggled in their first two seasons, losing all 32 games. Now, after a traumatic offseason reduced MLR to just six teams, the emphasis of the competition has switched to producing American prospects. Cavalieri was “a big reason why I entered the draft and wanted to be a part of the MLR this year”, Sherman said, of a process in which Anthem made him the No 1 pick.
The South Africa tour produced three wins but most importantly it gave Sherman a chance “to play with other guys my age, who I played against growing up or in college, and to see how development is going. My age group has a lot of the guys USA Rugby is shooting to have in the 2031 World Cup because we’ll be 28, 29 years old then, and that’s a pretty prime age for rugby,” particularly in the front five of the pack.
That Sherman has been playing since he was an 8-year-old is important to note. More American boys and girls are picking up rugby early. Just 22, an age when many US players have known the game the length of a college degree, Sherman has 14 years of learning behind him.
His experience with the famous Galloping Greens of Randwick was much shorter but inarguably vital, made possible by Bennett and Simon Poidevin, the great Australia flanker now a committee man at Randwick and father to a US Eagle, Christian Poidevin, a flanker for the Legion. “It was amazing,” Sherman said. “I thought there would be more scrutiny, being an American coming into an Australian team. But I felt so welcomed.”
He had no time to waste, getting his boots on and his ears taped “the day after I flew in. I started in the fourth-grade game, then played a lot of the third-grade game, then came off the bench for second grade. I didn’t get into first grade. The next weekend I played some third grade and second, and then I played all second grade my last week. I was just trying to prove myself to the players and coaches, to show I could fit in, and I had a good game. Kind of finished on a strong note.”
Kind of. That was the game of 36 tackles. The record for a Test match appears to be 38, by the great French flanker Thierry Dusautoir against New Zealand at the 2007 World Cup. Sydney’s second grade may be a few steps lower, but it’s no place to be found wanting.
“I was pretty sore the next day,” Sherman said, with a smile.
Back in the US, his tackling helped earn him a nickname: Wreck-It Will, after the cartoon character Ralph, adapted by friends at college. Those friends were in the stands last week in Orange County. So were mom and dad. On the field, much was made of Sherman’s contest with Jason Damm, the California lock and Eagles captain, nine years older and infinitely more experienced. Asked about that “head-to-head”, Sherman said: “I don’t know if it was as much of a match-up as they were making it out to be. He’s an absolutely incredible player, and it was just an honor to play against someone I’ve looked up to for so long and respect so much.”
He was equally level-headed about the significance of Anthem’s first-ever win, 39-26, six tries to four.
“Coming in as a rookie, you hear a lot of stories. For the players that were involved in years prior, beating California was an amazing moment, a long time coming for them. I was really happy to be a part of that, not only because I love to win. These guys are family now. The way we’re approaching the season is we had our first win ever, so now it’s time to get our first win at home, our first win against Chicago. Every game is a first, and I think that gives us just a little bit more motivation each time we step on to the pitch.”
-
Anthem RC v Chicago Hounds kicks off 4pm ET Saturday, live on ESPN+.
-
Martin Pengelly writes about rugby in the US on Substack, at The National Maul.
Leave a Reply