Rugby Remains Passion for Cavalier Tight End

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Two years later, Des Kitchings still remembers the conversation. Late in the spring of 2022, near the end of his first year at the University of Virginia, Henry Duke stopped by Kitchings’ office in the McCue Center. Duke, a tight end on the UVA football team, wanted to let his offensive coordinator know he’d be out of town for part of that summer.

“He came in and said, ‘Hey, Coach, I’m going to be playing with a national rugby team,’ ” Kitchings recalled, “and I was like, ‘Say what? Tell me more.’ ”

Duke, who stands 6-foot-5 and weighs about 235 pounds, explained that he was headed to Spain to play on a team made up of young American players. “I was like, ‘OK, this is the real deal then,’ ” Kitchings said.

In Spain, Duke played for the Eagle Impact Rugby Academy, which was founded in 2012 to develop and nurture promising young players in the United States. Later that summer he played for USA Rugby’s under-20 team in the Netherlands against squads from Holland, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

“That was definitely not an experience a lot of people have,” said Duke, a rising senior at UVA who attended Mills Godwin High School in the Richmond area.

Growing up, Duke focused on football, baseball and basketball. He got into rugby almost by chance.

“I loved baseball,” Duke said. “It’s my favorite sport to watch, to be honest. But I wasn’t very good at it. And one day my dad and I were driving by Deep Run Park and we saw a rugby clinic.”

His father had played rugby when he was younger, and he suggested that his son try the sport. “It went pretty well,” Duke said. “The next year was seventh grade. I got cut from the middle school baseball team and rugby became my full-time spring sport.”

He joined a local club, the Richmond Strikers, whose opponents include Fort Hunt, a club in Northern Virginia. One of Fort Hunt’s coaches, Dale Roach, saw enormous potential in Duke. Roach also coached in Rugby Virginia’s high-performance program, which brought together many of state’s top young players, including Duke.

“Great kid,” Roach said. “Very inquisitive and intuitive.”

In rugby, there are 15 players on a side. Eight are forwards and seven are backs. The forwards consist of two props, a hooker, two locks, two flankers and a No. 8. Duke plays lock, a position for which his height makes him well-suited.

“No team in America is spoiled for 6-5 locks,” Roach said.

With Roach’s support, Duke joined the Eagle Impact Rugby Academy. On a tour of British Columbia in 2019, Duke played well for the EIRA’s U16 team, and his performance helped him earn an invitation to train with USA Rugby’s U18 national team in California.

“That jump was pretty steep,” Duke said. “I was definitely one of the younger guys there. We played two games against Canada [in San Diego], and those were eye-opening games. Those guys were big, fast. It was probably the first real high-level game I played in, but I stole some lineouts, had some good tackles, so I made a good impression.”

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which put his rugby career on hold. In January 2021, Duke committed to Virginia’s football team as a preferred walk-on. He played rugby for the Strikers in the spring of his senior year at Godwin and then enrolled at UVA in the summer of 2021.

Football became his focus, but in the spring of 2022 his father let him know the EIRA was sending a team to Spain. He encouraged his son to get on the trip, “but I was kind of hesitant,” Duke said. “I was like, ‘I’m in football here, classes here, I don’t know.’ ”

After weighing his options, though, Duke decided the opportunity was too good to pass up. He wasn’t at this best when he played in Europe that summer, “just because I had been out of the game for a while,” Duke said. But his high ceiling in the sport was apparent, and after UVA’s 2022 football season ended he flew to California to train with USA Rugby.

“I had a good showing at winter camp,” Duke said. “I was in really good shape.”

For that, Nathan Pototschnik deserved considerable credit, Duke said. Then the associate strength and conditioning coach for Cavalier football, Pototschnik had starred in rugby at the U.S. Military Academy. “He got me on a rugby conditioning plan,” Duke said, “and it worked, for sure.”

Rugby took Duke abroad last summer, too, this time to Kenya, where he played for the United States in a U20 tournament. The U.S. team played four games in Nairobi: defeating Hong Kong and losing to Uruguay, Scotland and Zimbabwe.

“It was pretty intense,” Duke said.

The losses to Uruguay and Zimbabwe were close, and Duke was disappointed the U.S. didn’t fare better in Kenya. Still, he said, it “was the experience of a lifetime.”

His rugby commitments caused Duke to miss much of the football team’s preseason conditioning program last summer as well as the first day of training camp. But his football coaches have been “super supportive of me,” Duke said. “I feel like they just understand the magnitude of the opportunities I’ve had.”

Duke made his debut for the Cavaliers in 2023, when he appeared in two games, and he’s a valuable member of the scout-team offense.

“He loves football, and all the guys in the room love him. I love him,” said Kitchings, who oversees Virginia’s tight ends. “He’s got a great personality. Kind of a sneaky humor about him, which I appreciate, because it keeps the room a little lively when we’re in meetings. But the guy’s non-stop. He’s violent with his body, throwing it around, probably from his rugby background, and he loves to compete, so he’s a joy to be around.”

Duke said: “I just love the UVA football program. I love this school, I love the coaches I’m playing for, I love my teammates, and I just love the process of just trying to be the best football player I can be, always trying to improve in this aspect or this aspect. It’s still a dream I’ve had for my whole life to be a college football player.”

One of his assistant coaches at Godwin was Gary Chilcoat, who “saw the potential I had,” Duke said. “Even though I was 6-4, 165 pounds, he brought me up to varsity, and he was really the first person that told me I could play college football.”

Chilcoat passed away in 2019, and “living out his legacy has kind of been my why for playing college football,” Duke said, “and it’s something I take very seriously, because I know the impact he had in many people’s lives.”

Duke is majoring in statistics, with a minor in data science, and he’s on track to graduate next spring. He’ll conclude his football career at the end of this coming season, after which he’ll start playing rugby again.

The athletic department’s equipment managers include Max Zilberberg, who plays for the Virginia Rugby Football Club in Charlottesville, and Duke has trained alongside Zilberberg with the VRFC. Moreover, UVA has a club that competes against other college sides, and Duke is looking forward to representing the University in a second sport.

The undergraduate team plays its home games in Madison Bowl. “It’s such an iconic place at UVA,” Duke said, “and so just to play some rugby on there would be awesome. But I plan on playing with the [VRFC] too. Rugby is a skilled sport, so I want to get as much playing time and rugby time as possible while I’m at UVA.”

And after that? Who knows? If he commits himself to the sport, Duke has the size and athletic ability to eventually play professionally in Major League Rugby, Roach said.

“He could catch up quick,” said Roach, who works with Old Glory DC, the Major League Rugby team that’s based in Washington. “My joke, of course, is I can’t teach height. That will definitely stand him in good stead. The key will be his skills and his game knowledge, which are going to need to develop. But I can’t say enough about what a committed and genuine young person he is in everything he does.”

Duke, who has an internship with a technology business in Charlottesville this summer, believes his experience in the Cavalier football program will pay dividends for him when he returns to the pitch.

Collegiate rugby players “don’t have the kind of structure and resources we do,” Duke said. “So the strength, nutrition, recovery that I’m getting is just way above what they’re getting. I’m just stronger, know how to take care of my body better, just know how to prepare for a high-performance game better. But the thing is, rugby is a very skilled sport, and the only way to develop those skills is over time, and the only way to develop that conditioning is to play rugby. And so that is the part I’m missing out on.”

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