When he was 16 years old, of all the things he imagined he might be doing later in life, this wasn’t one of them:
Driving around Utah trying to talk kids into going to Dartmouth.
“I’d heard of the Ivy League growing up, but I hadn’t heard of Dartmouth,” Kyle Sumsion confesses. “I couldn’t have found Dartmouth on a map.”
But that was before he fell in love. With rugby.
That happened when he was 17, in his senior year at American Fork High School, and several friends talked him into playing for United, the local club rugby team.
Few athletes have picked up a sport faster or found more success. Less than six months after his first scrum, Kyle was playing as a freshman for the BYU rugby team. He started every game and the Cougars won their first national championship in 2009.
Then, after a two-year Latter-day Saint mission to Argentina, Kyle played four more years at BYU — on four more national championship teams. The last three seasons he was first-team All-American.
It should come as no surprise that, beyond that, 1) he was selected to play on the U.S. National Rugby Team three times, 2) he spent five years playing professional rugby, and 3) when his playing days were over he decided to become a coach.
He was an assistant coach for four years at West Point — helping the Cadets win a national championship — and three years ago was hired by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, to be its head men’s rugby coach.
By now Kyle could not only find Dartmouth on a map, he knew the school’s rugby heritage is as storied as anywhere in America. The first rugby match was played on the Dartmouth green in 1877 — an event that, history records, helped pave the way for the development of its wimpier cousin, American football. In 1951, Dartmouth fielded its first varsity rugby team and has played the sport ever since, its longtime rivals being the other seven schools in the Ivy League (namely Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Cornell and Brown).
As is the case throughout the Ivy League, Dartmouth offers no scholarships for athletics — or for academics, either. Entrance requirements are high and so is tuition, but once you’re accepted, students from lower economic backgrounds are given need-based financial aid to make up the difference.
Which brings us to why Kyle Sumsion spent last week back in his home state of Utah.
He wanted to let everyone know — particularly rugby players; and, even more particularly, Polynesian and other minority rugby players — that Dartmouth’s doors are open to literally anyone.
The impetus for the coach’s Utah trip dates back to last October, when Molonai Hola, a former University of Utah football player, visited the Dartmouth campus with his son Daniel, an East High School junior (and rugby player).
Hola, who was born in Tonga, has long been a proponent of finding opportunities for Tongans and others of Polynesian descent.
“Polys are good at rugby, that’s our skill,” says Molonai. “Why not use that skill as a way to get into an Ivy League school?” (He knows a thing or two about getting admitted to an Ivy League institution — two of Molonai and Lindsay Hola’s children, Nai and Alaina, are currently enrolled at Harvard. Nai is on the rugby team.)
If Kyle would come to Utah, Molonai volunteered to set up meetings for him with local coaches, players and their families in Davis County, Salt Lake County and Utah County.
The Dartmouth coach jumped at the offer. He already knew Utah produces top-level rugby talent, plus he was aware of the success the Dartmouth women’s rugby team has had with Polynesian athletes from Utah (five members in the women’s program are Utah Polys).
“The (Utah) women at Dartmouth have been super successful,” he says. “What Molonai suggested made perfect sense — to come out here and tap into a market that hasn’t been tapped into.”
In meetings in Layton, Salt Lake City and Provo, Kyle didn’t soft-pedal the fact that getting into Dartmouth requires a lot of hard work, both on the field and in the classroom.
But rest assured, if you get admitted, money won’t keep you out.
“It costs $83,000 a year to attend Dartmouth,” he says, “but money will never be the reason somebody doesn’t attend. Just for simple numbers here, if your family makes $120,000 or less, you pay nothing; you’ll get your meals, your housing, your education, you’ll pay nothing. On the other hand, if your family makes $10 million a year, you’re going to pay $83,000. But nobody’s getting turned away if they can’t afford it.”
Time will tell how many Ivy League dreams the Dartmouth coach might have launched on his first recruiting sojourn in his home state, “but if it inspires just one person, if it changes one life, that would be so worth it,” he says.
“We’re trying to create opportunities, that’s what this is all about,” says Hola. “Let’s open some doors, and see what happens.”
