Austin Grupp

INDIANA — When the Indiana (Pa.) University rugby team opens its spring season Saturday night, it plans to do some heavy hitting.

It will be doing so with heavy hearts.

The Crimson Hawks' club rugby team will take on Slippery Rock at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Miller Stadium in a memorial match honoring the late Austin Grupp.

Grupp, a 2014 Butler graduate, was killed in an automobile accident Dec. 29. He was a member of the Army Reserves and played for IUP's rugby team the past two years.

Claude Clark, a co-captain of the rugby squad, was a football teammate of Grupp's at Butler and entered the military with him.

“We were very close friends,” Clark said. “This memorial game was mine and the other captain's (Tyler Horatt) idea. We wanted to do something special to honor Austin.

“He was our motivator. He was a hard-hitter who set the tone for the game's intensity.”

Clark was a senior fullback-outside linebacker, Grupp a junior middle linebacker on the 2012 Golden Tornado football team. That was the last Butler football team to reach the WPIAL playoffs.

Find out more about what happens next in Thursday's Butler Eagle.