REPORTING. Stade Toulousain: in New York, a rugby school with a Toulouse accent has just opened in the Big Apple, we tell you its genesis

From the red brick of the banks of the Garonne to that of the brownstones of the Chelsea district of New York, there is a distance of 6,000 kilometers. But on both sides of the Atlantic, people from Toulouse are working to bring them closer together… thanks to the oval ball. A rugby school, one of the first in the city, has just been created in the Big Apple, at the initiative of a French expatriate from Toulouse. He can count on the very useful support of Stade Toulousain, which watches with kindness the hatching of this little sister in these distant lands.

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Around ten children, boys and girls, aged 9 to 16, meet every Wednesday evening, after school, in a gymnasium in Chelsea, within the “French Rugby Academy”, the name of this new structure. When spring arrives, two training sessions take place each week on a field on Randall’s Island, a small island located between Manhattan and the Bronx. And at the start of the school year in September, educators from Stade Toulousain should travel there to organize a three-day course for the city’s children.

Ntamack: “New York is prestigious”

While the 2031 (boys) and 2033 (girls) World Cups are scheduled in the United States, the “red and black” club is setting foot in this territory the size of a continent (two years ago, the pro section of the Stadium had formed a partnership with the Utah Warriors, but the American club has since filed for bankruptcy).

“New York is prestigious, and we found the wink nice,” confides Émile Ntamack, the head of the Stade Toulousain Academy. “We arrive in a country nourished by sport, and we hope that rugby can make a little push there. We try to encourage these initiatives from people who are motivated and who are committed to sport.”

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At the origin of this idea of ​​a rugby school in the heart of the skyscrapers of Manhattan, there is a Frenchman, Arnaud Gouachon, a forty-year-old of Toulouse origin, who has been living in the United States for around twenty years. “The idea came to me while looking for a rugby school for my son Gaston,” he says. “I realized that there were almost none! I am passionate about rugby, and we said to ourselves: Come on, let’s do it, it’s fun!”

Stade Toulousain wants to pass on its DNA

He then spoke to a figure of the French in New York, Zohair Ghenania, who had become known in particular for having successfully launched the… French Football Academy, a football school for the youngest which is now an institution in the Big Apple.

“I try to help the rugby school to structure itself, to grow, to manage daily life, such as finding grounds and organizing training sessions for example, explains Zohair Ghenania. We want to create a rugby club for young people in New York, to transmit the French philosophy of this game, but also values: the taste for effort, solidarity, team spirit, discipline.”

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It is also the idea of ​​Stade Toulousain, which decided to help this rugby school like no other to develop in an almost virgin land. “We are thinking about coming initially for a three-day course in September with club educators, who know our philosophy and our DNA,” explains Émile Ntamack. “We want to introduce young people to what we practice at the Stade Toulousain rugby school, based around creativity and freedom. This first course will allow them to see how it works.”

Before then considering a deepening of relations. “We can imagine creating a sort of Academy in New York, where we would find in the long term the specificities of Stade Toulousain training,” explains the former international winger. “Like a Stade Toulousain New York club, where we would train and send coaches.”

Sense of community in New York

The French Rugby Academy has already started to structure itself. The leaders found several coaches in New York who joined the adventure: Laurent Malen, who coached Chartres (Fédérale 3), Lara Vivolo, who finished 5^e from the 2010 World Cup with the United States, and Julien Lattes, a former Rouen player.

Little New Yorkers love the idea. For now, they’re mostly focused on creating a sense of community. “My son, Gaston, was connected to his origins: when he returns to Toulouse, he can share this passion for rugby with the rest of his family, notes Arnaud Gouachon. Among the children who come to train, there is a young boy who has just arrived from Japan: he is younger than Gaston and asked him to be his referent at the international school where they both attend. We create a bond.” On and off the field.