A big play for youth, pro rugby is taking shape near downtown Indianapolis

Plans to turn an aging, city-owned soccer complex into a rugby-focused facility could catalyze the sport’s growth in central Indiana and help lure major tournaments, championships, teams and governing bodies, insiders and experts say.

Rugby Indy LLC expects to begin its $45 million revamp of Kuntz Memorial Soccer Stadium, at 1502 W. 16th St., this summer. The firm reached terms with Indy Parks and Recreation this spring to lease and manage the property for 20 years.

Bill Ehret, one of four partners in Rugby Indy, told IBJ the company has already discussed the project with the sport’s national governing body, USA Rugby.

Rugby Indy also hopes the revamped facility will attract a team in the Major League Rugby system while setting the stage for potential bids for early-round men’s and women’s rugby World Cup matches in the next decade. The facility could also serve as home to other community activities and sports, including ultimate Frisbee, football, lacrosse and soccer.

“Rugby is the catalyst, 100%,” Ehret said. “But we’re not trying to limit the facility’s use to rugby for community and for other professional league uses or teams that want to be based out of Kuntz. There’s a lot of sports that have core followings, but they don’t have massive attendance draws. This is for them, too.”

The four-phase project—expected to be completed by early 2027—is intended to transform the facility into an 8,000-seat stadium with a secondary practice field, a new entryway akin to the outfield entrance at the Indianapolis Indians’ Victory Field, a public plaza, new lighting, hospitality suites, a press box, a training facility of up to 15,000 square feet and a parking garage.

Rugby Indy is also talking about pursuing, with the city, an extension of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail north to 16th Street and west to Riverside Park to complement the project. But it has not committed to the idea.

On the campus, existing concession areas and office spaces will be renovated, as will locker rooms on the north end of the property. The practice field will get a new turf in the coming months—and organizers said it could someday be equipped with a seasonal inflatable dome to allow for winter practices.

Aside from Ehret, an Indianapolis-based commercial real estate broker, the investment group consists of Brian Williams, who works in the biopharmaceutical industry; professional rugby player and Indiana University graduate Bryce Campbell; and Indianapolis Arts Center President Mark Williams. Former Dallas Mavericks owner and IU alum Mark Cuban—who played rugby in college—has also expressed support for the project through a letter to USA Rugby, but he is not an investor.

The renewed Kuntz facility will remain a public amenity, Ehret said. In fact, more than 50% of the programming at the facility is expected to be neighborhood-focused, including an after-school program for charter school Vision Academy, adjacent to the Kuntz campus, and at least 750 hours of annual Indy Parks programming.

Youth-focused opportunity

Patrick Talty, president of the Indiana Sports Corp, said rugby is an up-and-coming sport. It’s more popular in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and France. But it is also growing in the United States, a 2021 study from New York City-based Nielsen Research found.

“I’m familiar with it from visiting overseas,” Talty said, “and it’s a very popular sport over there. But there are more universities, more grass roots [now here]—there’s more kids playing it. And as that continues, it’ll become more and more popularized.”

According to Rugby Indiana, the state governing body for the sport at the youth (grade school) and high school level, about 2,000 Hoosier children play rugby. While that figure is only 1/10th of the 20,564 youth and teens who played football in Indiana in 2022 (the most recent year for which data is available), rugby is on an upward trend, proponents say.

“One of the biggest challenges we have in growing rugby inside of the I-465 circle is, there’s no field space for anybody to play,” Talty said. “It’s a challenge for the city schools, for the charter schools—and it’s a nearly impossible challenge.”

The Kuntz project will create opportunities for those schools. “That would be a huge thing—to [eliminate] those barriers, especially since many of the kids inside Indianapolis are at risk, underserved and underrepresented,” he said. “That’s something we’re trying to be mindful of.”

Indiana has about 38 youth teams and another 40 high school programs. Both Indiana University and Marian University have programs as well, with each participating in Division I, the top rung of National Collegiate Rugby (the sport is not recognized by the NCAA). In Marion County, only Arsenal Tech and North Central high schools have teams. Royal Irish Rugby, a non-school-affiliated club for high-schoolers, is also based in Indianapolis.

Wayne Eells, executive director of Rugby Indiana, said the organization could use Kuntz Stadium to host coaching and referee clinics, along with training camps and other summer events for youth and high school players.

“To know we have an anchor point … and we can have [those events] more frequently, that’s a huge thing,” Eells said. “And because it’s Indianapolis, it will potentially be easier for us to get more out-of-state, higher-profile coaches and educators to come. Those things are going to help with the growth and elevation of the game in Indiana, in addition to being field space for the kids in the city to have a place to play.”

Making moves?

Ehret and Brian Williams have both told IBJ they hope Rugby Indiana’s use of the facility goes beyond high school and youth matches and tournaments; they want the governing body to move its headquarters there and to host major events there, including the state tournament.

Moving the headquarters is “a possibility,” Rugby Indiana’s Eells told IBJ. “But we’ve not discussed it. I’m sure we would look at it.”

Using Kuntz for the organization’s state tournament would be complicated. It would likely require a shift in how the event is conducted because the facility will have only two fields.

Right now, the rugby semifinals and finals are held on a single day at either Cyntheanne Park in Fishers or Moose Rugby Grounds in Elkhart; both facilities have several fields that can be used at one time. Also, Westfield High School broke ground in May on rugby facilities that could be used for tournaments.

Curt Trout, head coach of the Pendleton Youth Rugby Club’s boys high school team, told IBJ that, although he likes both the Moose and Cyntheanne fields, a championship tournament in Indianapolis could help expand the sport’s reach locally.

And he’s less concerned about having fewer fields. He said playing just one or two games at a time will allow for more focus on each contest. With multiple fields, important matches in different divisions might be going on at the same time, dividing fan attention.

“I think they would have to probably reinvestigate how they do their championships, which would be a very easy fix,” Trout said. “And to play at a facility that would have those kinds of [amenities] and to try and get people into the games would be a fantastic change.”

Eells said Rugby Indiana is open to considering Kuntz for tournaments but won’t make any commitments until work on the campus is underway.

“We look forward to being able to use the facility and working with them,” he said.

Trout said he has already heard from parents of several players who have expressed excitement about the prospect of Kuntz being used for rugby. He said he’d like to see the facility used similarly to what’s done in Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago and other cities, where top-tier high school teams are invited to play a match ahead of a professional or international competition. Those events, he said, give the teams—and the sport—exposure.

“Being able to play in a stadium like that is just a cool experience, and it’s one of those things that gives rugby credibility,” he said. “Being able to play down in Indy, and you’ve got a bunch of eyeballs on you, there’s a better chance to get media coverage and have it shown on TV.”

National player?

In addition to pursuing Rugby Indiana as a tenant or user of Kuntz Stadium, the group developing the project is interested in an even bigger prize: USA Rugby.

The organization has four national teams—a men’s and women’s roster for the Olympics and men’s and women’s teams to compete in World Cup programs.

USA Rugby is based in Glendale, Colorado, and hasn’t indicated any intent to move. But the Kuntz project partners are hopeful the group might consider it—or at least pick Indianapolis to host portions of the 2031 Men’s Rugby World Cup and the 2033 Women’s Rugby World Cup, which will mark the first time the United States hosts either event.

Initial reactions from USA Rugby to the Kuntz Stadium project have been “very positive,” Ehret said, with discussions expected to continue after the Olympics.

While the facility would likely not be big enough to host World Cup matches—particularly on the men’s side—Ehret said Rugby Indy would work with the city and the owners of the proposed Major League Soccer franchise on a stadium design that would allow the city to host lower-demand matches for the tournament. Such a facility could also be used for international friendlies—competitions held outside of worldwide tournaments.

He said Kuntz Stadium could serve as a training site for World Cup teams, as well as home to a Premier Lacrosse League team or the Indy AlleyCats, a team in the Ultimate Frisbee Association.

Trout said if Indianapolis were selected as a host for a World Cup event, that would likely bring an influx of investment into the sport by national and international sports bodies hoping to expand rugby across the state and raise awareness in young people.

“That’s really where they want that emphasis to go—to the youth side,” he said. “They want to be able to have a host [city] that’s credible and has been able to grow the sport there.”

Ehret said the hope is to have part of the Kuntz facility open by mid-2025 for some youth or high school competitions, but he said more engineering and design work is necessary to get the project off the ground, particularly to accommodate larger groups.

In the first three phases of the project—which will not include the parking garage or training facility—the investment group plans to spend $12.7 million.

“We’ll have some meetings [soon] with the national governing body and other professional leagues and teams to discuss scheduling and timing of being able to have events there,” he said. “But until we know what the architects and engineers say, and we’ve selected a general contractor, we don’t have a target date set.”

USA Rugby did not return multiple emailed requests for comment.

Brian Williams previously told IBJ that Rugby Indy hopes to offer USA Rugby a chance to consolidate its operations. Currently, its headquarters is in Colorado and its teaming facilities are in California and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Rugby Indy investors also hope to secure a professional rugby team for Indianapolis, which could use the facility for its matches, although they don’t expect to be directly involved in owning or managing such a club.

“We believe strongly that both potential investor owners of teams and [Major League Rugby] would be very supportive of a facility that’s rugby-specific, creates a good fan experience and has stability as the league continues to grow,” Ehret said. “We would be interested in the prospect, but we would not spearhead it.”

The Indiana Sports Corp.’s Talty said the organization is “very supportive” of Rugby Indy’s efforts at Kuntz and is prepared to help facilitate conversations with local, state and national organizations that might take an interest in the project.

He said the endeavor has led the sports tourism agency to begin “to think about rugby as a future business generator,” whether it be having special events there, national events that the Sports Corp. bids on, or international-type friendlies.

He added that the renovations to Kuntz are also driving a conversation about pursuing USA Rugby and its associated camps and facilities.

“There’s that stuff that we can bid on and bring to Indy; we’ll help those organizations realize those dreams and lend our expertise and resources to help bid on those,” Talty said.

An Olympic opportunity

Marc Ganis, owner of Chicago-based sports agency Sportscorp Ltd., said going after USA Rugby and other rugby activity is “very much worth Indy’s time and effort” because it would strengthen the city’s position as an amateur and Olympic sports capital.

Already, Indianapolis is home to USA Football, USA Gymnastics and USA Track & Field. In fact, USA Track & Field has just committed to new office space as part of an arena project at Indiana University Indianapolis. And sports tourism officials have told IBJ they want to expand the city’s reach to similar organizations.

The city, Ganis said, “needs to stay ahead of the curve for facilities, offices, financial support for this large and growing group of sports that are in a relatively early stage on a professional level but well along on an amateur level.”

He said Indianapolis will likely continue to compete with Colorado Springs, where the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and several other sports are based, for major organizations and training facilities.

“Indy is the place to be,” Ganis said. “Having attracted the NCAA headquarters, having the Final Fours on a regular basis—that all certainly helps. But what I would highlight is what the city just did with the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials, as it shows what Indy’s position is in the sports world, as it’s a potentially very lucrative one, because of all the tourism that takes place as a result.”

He added that the U.S. Olympic Committee will likely put out a request for proposals for a new headquarters or other facilities in coming years—similar to the NCAA’s move from Kansas City, Missouri, in 1999—and he expects Indianapolis to be among the favorites on the list, alongside Atlanta, San Diego and remaining in Colorado Springs.

“I don’t expect that the USOC will ever fully leave [Colorado], but I do expect there will be opportunities for other locations to have more and more Olympic associations and activities,” Ganis said.•