Upcoming Events & Important Information

2023 marks 45 years of Nooga Rugby! The club will be celebrating the reunion in conjunction with our annual Red and Black Ball to be held Saturday, April 22, 2023. The event will be held at The Feed Tavern & Table, 201 W. Main St., Chattanooga, TN 37402. Start time will be 6:00 pm. Beer and wine will be provided along with appetizers, a cash bar for mixed drinks. Tickets are $30.00 for a single and $50.00 for a couple and can be purchased online. If you have any photos or other memorabilia you would like to share, please bring them along. We are hoping to host as many past and present players and supporters so please make plans to attend.

Nooga Rugby has been invited to work the 2023 Riverbend Festival once again. The Festival will be held at Ross’s Landing June 2 – 4, 2023. In order for the club to participate, each server will now be required to complete either an alcohol awareness training, provided by the Hamilton County Coalition, 5721 Marlin Rd building  6100 suite 3200, Chattanooga, 37411, or apply for a Tennessee ABC card through the state. 

After looking at the two alternatives, the most cost effective and convenient way is to apply for an ABC card through the state. The onsite training at the Hamilton County Coalition takes an hour and a half to complete and costs $30.00. In order to make it worth their time, they ask for at least 10 participants and with everyone’s different schedules, it is hard to get a large group to attend all at one time. 

As for the ABC card, the best one stop website is www.abcpermits.com. It provides all three steps to complete your application and the cost is $51.00 ($20.00 to the state and $31.00 for the online course). The club will reimburse you for the fees and your ABC card is good for 5 years. It will also allow club members to work the Riverbend Tents if we are needed in addition to the rolling carts we have worked in the past. The online course takes about 3.5 hours and can be completed in stages, so long as you finish it all in 14 days. Since we all must have a card to serve at Riverbend, please try to get this done soon. Our contact at Riverbend has indicated there will be more rolling carts in 2023 so we will need good numbers to staff all of the locations. Further details and signup sheets will be posted as they become available.

Another initiative the club is undertaking is to keep our Old Boys more involved. One idea that came to mind was to have a monthly get together at Mikes Hole in the Wall or other establishment. While you might not be able to attend every month, it still would be a good opportunity to get us all out once in a while. Once our email contact list is complete, we will start letting everyone know what our schedule will be. In honor of long time club member Mark Hopkins and his legendary bar that supported the club throughout the 1990’s, it was decided to name the group Stone Lion Old Boys (SLOBS).

For several years we maintained an email list to keep people up to date on club events. Unfortunately this was hosted through Yahoo, who discontinued the service a couple of years ago. Fortunately Jack was able to capture the majority of old addresses along with past CIPP rosters and will be compiling a new list. If you would like to be a part of this, please email Jack at jackzhead@cs.com.

New for 2023 is the launch of our Nooga Rugby Booster Club. Club leadership has been working the past few months to organize this to hopefully keep past and present members as well as new people involved with club activities. Long time club supporter Phyllis Benson along with Claire Novak are spearheading our efforts to get this up and running so if you would like to be a part of this, please contact them on the Boosters tab.

All players MUST BE CIPPed in order to play. CIPP registration is valid for 1 calendar year and provides secondary insurance coverage for USA Rugby-sanctioned events. CIPP registration can be done at https://myaccount.rugbyxplorer.com.au/ or via the Rugby Xplorer app.