Dylan Reubenking / Nisqually Valley News
Jacob Warner’s life goal is to protect as many heartbeats as he can across as many acres as possible.
When he’s on the rugby pitch, lining up as either a hooker or a flanker, that switch is flipped. In every sport he’s played — whether it be rugby, football or wrestling — Warner sought physicality.
Warner, 19, born and raised in Rainier, recently committed to Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina, to continue his academic and athletic career. The school is a private liberal arts college, while the Crusaders rugby program competes at the National Collegiate Rugby Division I level.
Warner began his rugby journey at 13 years old when he was looking for a physical spring sport after playing football in the fall and wrestling in the winter. He attended a practice for the Olympia-based Budd Bay Barbarians and ended up playing in a game the next day.
“I scored the very first time I touched the ball,” Warner said. “That’s what made me fall in love with it.”
He competed with the Barbarians for two years while in middle school before the COVID-19 pandemic shut competition down, and he rejoined the team for two years in high school. Warner won a state championship with the Barbarians in 2024, an experience he described as “probably the best of my entire life.”
Warner excelled in every sport. He lined up at middle linebacker for the Rainier High School Mountaineers before moving and transferring to Steilacoom High School, where he qualified for the Mat Classic XXXV as a wrestler in the 175-pound weight class in 2024. Rugby always stood above the rest for him, however.
“The part of football that I love is tackling. I love flying and rallying to the ball. With wrestling, I really like grabbing people and throwing them on the ground,” Warner said. “Rugby is the perfect combination of both. It’s a lot more like wrestling than it’s like football. It’s double-leg tackling and grabbing onto people and pinning them.”
After graduating from Steilacoom High School in 2024, Warner attended Salt Lake Community College in Utah, where he competed for the Salt Lake Haggies club team for “three-fourths of a season” before he got “too caught up in college,” he said. But the experience of playing rugby at a higher level motivated him to continue climbing the rugby ladder.
“It was a lot harder than I expected. I’d say the average age of players is probably like 28 or so. They’re a lot bigger than me. They’re a lot more skilled and have more experience,” Warner said. “But I learned a lot there, and it helped my mental fortitude to want to keep moving forward.”
Belmont Abbey College was attractive to Warner from the jump, mostly due to its location and the Crusaders’ coaching staff, led by head coach Genaro Fessia.
“I talked to like seven or eight other colleges, and Coach Genaro really stuck out to me. I thought he was a really good coach and very passionate about his craft,” he said. “He’s an Argentinian coach, so he has a more free-flowing, more aggressive approach.”
Warner’s Rainier High School friend and football teammate Riffe Holmes, who passed away in 2021, helped motivate him to pursue the dream of becoming a Division I athlete. He made that dream come true when he committed to Belmont Abbey College this month.
“He was a big deal to me. My freshman year, I decided that I was going to go DI in a sport. He always told me to chase that dream, and I finally made that promise happen. That was the best feeling,” Warner said. “I was a freshman when he was a senior. He was one of those guys that always made you want to do better. He filled the role of an older brother.”
Warner will suit up for the Crusaders first in the fall in 15s rugby, which features 15 players on each side of the pitch, before continuing in the spring with the 7s season. He admitted that playing 7s will be a challenge as he has almost always played 15s throughout his career.
“I’m pretty intimidated about it. It’s a lot less physical, and it takes a lot more IQ and a lot more speed,” he said. “Those are points in my game that I’m lacking. I’m much more of a physical player, but I’m very much looking forward to improving my skills through 7s.”
Another reason why Warner chose Belmont Abbey College was unrelated to the rugby pitch or any sport. His dream after rugby is to become a wildlife biologist or zoologist, and his next goal is to get an internship in wildlife conservation, specifically with red wolves. Warner worked as a volunteer at Wolf Haven International in Tenino and grew fascinated with the endangered species.
“I think there’s only 17 to 23 wild red wolves left in the entire world. They’re only in North Carolina,” he said. “Ever since I was a little kid, the only thing on my mind was animals. I’ve always been super passionate about them, especially highly intelligent predators like wolves. It wasn’t even until I was about 16 that I had even heard about the American red wolf. I was devastated that I didn’t hear about them because they’re not very known. It’s a really sad story and I feel like more attention has to be brought to them.”
Warner is also passionate about the Amazon Rainforest, which he explained is in danger with the construction of a highway destroying the ecosystem. He sees a similarity between his passion for red wolves and the rainforest and hopes his career puts him in a position to “protect as many heartbeats as I can.”
“A third of the world’s oxygen comes from that ecosystem. We have uncontacted tribes living there that haven’t been impacted by cellphones. It’s a world lost in time, and it’s the last place of true nature,” Warner said. “We need to bring attention to it. I feel like this is my overall calling, not just a promise I made or a passion. This is where I’m going.”
Warner said he is proud to represent Rainier as both a Division I athlete and in his future career endeavors. While he has moved around a handful of times in his life, Rainier, he said, has always been home.
“It was never my choice to leave. I always wanted to stay in Rainier. I didn’t even attend my graduation from Steilacoom because it wasn’t my home. It wasn’t my school,” Warner said. “Rainier means a bunch to me. It’s somewhere that I look around and I have memories in every square foot of that town.”
