Alex Mackenzie could have easily gone the college football route.
By the time he graduated from high school in 2016, the former standout linebacker and running back from Seattle was fielding offers from Division I and Division II schools.
But there was just something about rugby that he couldn’t ignore. A brief introduction to the sport during his senior year led Mackenzie to start talking to some college rugby programs, including the one at Central, about pursuing a less-traditional athletic career.
After five successful seasons with the Wildcats, Mackenzie (’21) was invited to try out for multiple Japanese professional clubs. Now, he’s in the middle of his third season with the Urayasu D-Rocks in the country’s highest division, Japan Rugby League One.
He has no doubt that he made the correct decision about his future.
“I was a little bit starstruck my first year over here, but I have settled down the past two seasons,” said Mackenzie, whose
position of flanker utilizes many of the same skills he developed on the football field. “It’s a very different lifestyle than over in the States—especially in a big city like Tokyo—but I feel like I’ve adjusted well. Now I’m just cruising.”
Mackenzie explained that his options to play professional rugby were somewhat limited when he graduated from Central. Major League Rugby had just launched in the U.S. and wasn’t yet established as a professional league.
After talking to an agent, he realized that his best chance to make a decent living would be in Japan—the country where he was born and lived until the age of 5.
“The leagues in Japan, France, and New Zealand pay the best, so I decided to take a shot,” Mackenzie said. “It can be hard to get your foot in the door in Japan because they can only take a certain number of foreign players. But, fortunately, I ended up with a couple different offers.”
Rugby has become extremely popular in Japan, drawing up to 40,000 fans a night for matches in and around Tokyo and Osaka. The teams are owned by international corporations like Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), which owns Urayasu D-Rocks.
Mackenzie explained that NTT previously owned two pro teams and combined them at the start of the 2022-23 season, putting all of the best players on one roster. He was proud—and relieved—that he survived the merger.
“I thought I played pretty well my first season, and to be chosen for the new team gave me a lot of confidence,” Mackenzie said.
He knows he can fall back on his CWU exercise science degree, but he’s not thinking about that yet. For now, he’s having too much fun on the pro rugby pitch.
“It really is a dream come true,” Mackenzie said. “Everyone wants to be paid well for doing something they enjoy, and I couldn’t ask for anything more. It can be easy to take for granted, but at the end of the day, you remember that only a small number of people get to do this. I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had so far.”
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