How Kimball Kjar co-founded Utah Warriors Rugby – Utah Business

The Founder Series is a column by and about Utah founders and how they got to where they are today. Click here to read past articles in the series.

I didn’t wake up one day and say to myself, “I’d like to start a professional rugby team.” In fact, I was more than happy doing what I was doing at the time. But the thing that attracted me to this business was the impact sports has on communities—especially for kids. 

Community identities are built and sustained by sports. Everyone knows what it means to be a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and everyone knows what the Lakers mean to the city of Los Angeles. Rivalries between Brigham Young University (BYU) and the University of Utah are something that can literally divide families along blue or red lines. 

This type of passion is something very few businesses can replicate. You don’t see downtown parades celebrating Amazon’s annual earnings reports, even if they beat all industry expectations, do you? Nor do you often see adults and children wearing hoodies, hats or jackets with the logos of General Electric or Berkshire Hathaway. The power of sports teams is unrivaled in the level of impact that they can have on individuals, families, businesses—and, above all—our youth.

A game of hooligans played by gentlemen

Sports have always been a part of my life. Like most kids raised in Utah in the ‘80s, soccer, basketball, wrestling, football and other outdoor sports like skiing or snowboarding were a big part of everything I did. 

But it was a chance interaction with my college roommate as a freshman that led me to take up the sport of rugby after I decided—at the last minute—that I didn’t want to follow through with the opportunity to wrestle for BYU. His brothers had all played rugby at the university, and when he said, “You should go and try out,” my response was, “Sure, why not.” 

I may not have known all of the rules that freshman year, but my wrestling fitness carried me, and I was able to make the team. Following my freshman year, a mission call for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took me to Brisbane, Australia, where my passion for the game of rugby deepened. This eventually led to a call-up with the USA National Rugby Team, the USA Eagles, after returning from my mission. 

Through my six-year Eagles career, I saw what rugby meant to communities and what the sport did for kids in places like South Africa, New Zealand, France, England, Ireland and other countries. Rugby is one of the world’s largest sports, and despite its perceived brutality, it supports one of the world’s most inclusive cultures for all ability levels and walks of life. It also is led by a deep sense of respect and integrity that is unrivaled by any other top-tier professional or international sport. In fact, Winston Churchill once called rugby a “game of hooligans played by gentlemen.” 

For example, after every professional and international match, opposing rugby teams—along with their staff and key supporters—get together for an after-match meal that sees each team’s captain share congratulatory comments, often offering a man-of-the-match gift to the opponent. Can you imagine if LeBron James and James Harden appeared at an after-game social and were asked to “congratulate” each other and their opposing teammates? It’s unthinkable in today’s culture of sports celebrity.

Rugby evokes something truly powerful in people that I believe is exactly what society needs. That’s why the Utah Warriors core values, as represented by the four stripes on each jersey, are community, family, tradition, and respect. 

Building a league that can endure

After my time with the Eagles, I went into coaching and supporting the administrative aspect of the game of rugby at the local and national levels. This was essentially volunteer work while I built a professional career and grew a variety of businesses with some amazing business partners.

In 2015, one of these businesses was in the talent acquisition and executive search industry within the high-tech sector. We had worked with numerous Bay Area and Utah-based early and late-stage tech companies and were building a decent business within a highly competitive industry. 

Around the same time, domestic and international momentum for a professional rugby competition in the United States was picking up. The first attempt at such a competition was called PRO, which stood for “Professional Rugby Organization.”

In the end, PRO lasted just one season in 2016. A window of opportunity arose after that failure, which led to the emergence of a different competition. Because I was involved in the rugby community, I was looped into various groups who wanted to help professionalize rugby in the States.