By Chris R. Vaccaro
Of the thousands of American rugby players, many have also played football or made a transition from football to rugby (see the profile of Penn State’s Kevin Kimble, page 30). But some duel sport athletes, no matter how good they may be at rugby, still abandon the sport for a crack at big-time football.
One recent case is 20-year-old Nate Ebner. Nate seemed destined for US National Team stardom, but has decided to play football at Ohio State. Few people in the US rugby community would have expected this development a couple of years ago when Ebner was building an impressive rugby resume.
Football was Ebner’s passion as a boy, but beginning at about age six he was exposed to rugby through his dad Jeff, who in the 1970s played for the Des Moines and Scioto Valley RFCs (under the surname Bailin). “Rugby and sports were his life,” says Nate, who started playing organized rugby at 12. “We were always throwing some kind of ball around.”
Nate played rugby instead of football at Ohio’s Hilliard Davidson High School and by the time he was a senior in 2006 he was a US U19 star. During that senior year, the 6-foot-1, 197-pounder had a chance to play football but passed so another player could get the roster spot. Plus, the Rugby World Cup was coming up in June and Ebner did not want to risk injury on the football field.
Hilliard Davidson ultimately won the Division I Ohio State football championship that year, in a thrilling 36-35, double overtime win over the Mentor Cardinals.
“I wanted to play football so bad,” Ebner says wistfully. “I missed out on a good opportunity to play that year.”
All the while, Nate was a force on the rugby pitch. As a standout National U19 and U20 player from 2007-08, he was talked about as a future US Eagle and in the fall of ’08 he joined the Ohio State University rugby club.
Everything was going great athletically for the strapping young rugby phenom until tragedy struck on November 13. Nate Ebner’s world was turned upside down when his father and best friend Jeff was murdered after thieves broke into his salvage yard business.
The owner of “Ebner and Sons”, 53-year-old Jeff tried fighting off the intruders to defend his property but was fatally wounded. He was put on life support at Miami Valley Hospital so his organs could be harvested for donation and he died the next day. (This past June, Willie R. Anderson was indicted on three counts of murder, one count of aggravated murder, two counts each of aggravated robbery and felonious assault, and one count of tampering with evidence in relation to Jeff’s death.)
“That’s who my dad was,” says Nate. “That’s just how he lived life. He defended everything. He had a never-back-down attitude.”
Nate was sidelined at the time of his dad’s death, having been injured during a fall game against LSU, and has not played rugby since. After the tragedy, he did some soul searching about his future, while trying to rehab from injury in the weight room.
“Getting through the workouts was tough,” says Nate. “My dad and I spent a lot of time working out together, so it was actually more emotional going through that without him.”
As an Ohio State engineering student with a vigorous course load, Nate decided that traveling the world for rugby tournaments would negatively impact his studies. So he decided to give football another shot. He tried out as a walk-on this past January and made the team as a defensive back. Only two scholarship players jumped higher on the vertical test and Nate’s 225-pound bench press and long distance run were above average. For good measure, he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds.
Does Ebner believe his training and long experience as a rugby player helped him excel in his switch to football?
“Having the base conditioning helped, “he says, “especially during the walk-on tryouts.”
Nate notices a difference in the pace of the games—rugby with more of a flow and football being more explosive. He admits to having had some problems with tackling since rugby is head-behind and football is head-in-front. As a fullback in rugby, Ebner was used to running sideways and back pedaling, which has helped his transition to becoming a football defensive back.
At first, Nate thought about trying out as a kicker since he occasionally kicked for points in rugby, but thought himself as a more well-rounded athlete. “I felt like I could compete all over,” he says.
Nate possesses the confidence all great athletes must have to excel. When he joined the OSU rugby club, he was openly unhappy with the lifting program and was ambitious enough to create his own workout regimen. After he pulled a hamstring during a spring football workout, he wasn’t really satisfied with the football program’s methods either.
“He says the football team’s lifting program is not as good as his own,” says OSU rugby coach Tom Rooney. “He has a high opinion of his own workouts.”
They obviously work, and aside from a couple of untimely injuries, Ebner is in peak physical condition. “He prepared himself very well,” says Salty Thompson, who coached Ebner for three years on the U19 and U20 teams. “He’s very professional in his approach and training programs.”
Nate is closing in on his father’s bench and dead lift personal bests of 335 and 525 pounds, respectively, and plans on wearing his dad’s old lifting belt while accomplishing the task. “It will be emotional without him there to see me do that,” he says.
As for the OSU rugby team, Rooney has now lost five players to the football team since he started coaching in 1993, and must restructure the team after Ebner’s departure. Fortunately for Rooney, the 25 recruits he has coming in for this year’s class help make the team the best it’s been—at least on paper—in five seasons.
“It’s a disappointment Nate decided to play football, but it’s understandable,” says Rooney, who mentioned the last player to jump to the football ship was Steve Smith, a former defensive back for the Buckeyes. “Now the team doesn’t have that naturally gifted guy.”
For Nate, the next steps are rehabbing his hamstring and making it into OSU football games this fall; at the very least on special teams. Chances are the ambitious young Buckeye won’t settle for limited playing time. Not if he uses what his dad preached to him, anyway.
“He taught me to be relentless on the field, to never back down and go 100 percent every single time.”
A couple of days before he died, Nate’s dad related his philosophy on “finishing strong.”
“He told me, ‘Finish everything you do strong—everything.’” Nate relates. “That’s what keeps me going.”
Now Nate wears a bracelet with a motto written on it. “Finish Strong.”
