When Paul Lasike first arrived at BYU as a freshman in 2009, he didn’t see a football career in his future. Not one in college and especially not one in the NFL.

Lasike grew up in New Zealand and came to Utah his senior year of high school as part of an international exchange program with Highland Rugby. It was there that he was discovered by BYU rugby scouts, who recruited him to join the team.

After playing rugby at BYU for a year and helping BYU win its first national championship, he left to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alabama.

When he returned to the team in 2012, one of the football program’s strength and conditioning coaches encouraged him to try out for the football team.

So, he did.

Learning football at BYU

Despite never playing an organized down of football in his life, Lasike earned a football scholarship in his first season on the team, but the transition wasn’t easy for the new running back.

“It was really hard. If you’ve never played or you’ve never seen it before, it’s like, ‘Oh, these guys are just handing off the ball to someone. These guys are just making tackles,’ but it’s a whole system in American football,” he told the Deseret News this week.

It’s a system that Lasike said is “much more complicated than rugby, in terms of X’s and O’s because there’s so many different plays. Whereas, rugby is a lot more improvising.”

“I remember wanting to give up so many times, but I’m glad I stuck with it,” he said.

Sticking with his new sport paid off.

During his three seasons with the Cougars, Lasike racked up 843 rushing yards on 171 carries. His most productive season came as a senior when he had 364 rushing yards, 267 receiving yards and nine touchdowns.

He did all of this while leading the Cougars to three more national rugby titles.

Life in the NFL

Lasike didn’t see his football career continuing after BYU, thinking he didn’t have “great chances” of making it to the next level.

“I didn’t really have aspirations to go to the NFL. I was always kind of like a mid-tier player I would say,” he said.

But in 2014, an NFL agent contacted Lasike. He decided to train for BYU’s pro day and see what professional opportunities could come from it.

He went undrafted in the 2015 NFL draft but signed with the Arizona Cardinals as an undrafted free agent.

After playing in every preseason game and scoring a touchdown in the last game, Lasike felt good about his chances of surviving the final roster cuts.

But the Cardinals cut him.

“That was tough,” he said. “But it was also like relieving because it was like I left it all out there, so there’s not much else I could have done.”

Lasike earned a second chance in the NFL when he joined the Chicago Bears’ practice squad.

“It worked out in other ways,” Lasike said of Arizona cutting him. “I was able to go to Chicago and they were able to see some of the film and things I was able to do during the training camp.”

Following a season on the Bears’ practice squad, he made the 53-man roster. The first game of the season would become his favorite NFL memory.

“That was just a sigh of, ‘Wow, it’s all paid off,’ you know?” he said.

Going into his third season in Chicago, he was informed that the team wouldn’t be using fullbacks anymore and as a result he’d be released.

Most of the NFL was moving away from fullbacks, limiting his options. Lasike had the option of playing in Seattle or New England, but he decided his time in the NFL was over.

“To go as a practice squad player with a young family, it was tough,” he said.

Returning to his rugby roots

That’s when Kimball Kjar, Lasike’s rugby coach at BYU, convinced him to join the Utah Warriors, the new rugby team he was starting in the brand-new Major League Rugby.

After that first season in 2018, Lasike headed overseas to play rugby in London with Premiership Rugby‘s Harlequins for four years.

He then returned to Utah and the Warriors in 2022 and has been with the team ever since.

Lasike has seen rugby in Utah grow “tenfold” from that first season, he said.

In 2018, the Warriors didn’t have training kits, practiced “in a random patch of grass in Lehi” and “was obviously a startup company,” Lasike said.

“When I came back in 2022, the Warriors were playing in Zions Bank Stadium — things had developed. They have international players. They have cars for them now — housing and cars for all the international boys,” he said. “It’s grown a ton, and it’s been really cool to see.”

He’s also seen growth in the MLR, which started with seven teams but expanded to 11 this season, as “the level of play in the league has upped.”

Lasike has already witnessed the sport of rugby grow in Utah since the U.S. women’s rugby sevens won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where Utah native Alex “Spiff” Sedrick scored the medal-winning try.

In addition to playing for the Warriors and running his own construction company, “Warrior1 Construction,” Lasike coaches the BYU women’s rugby team.

Last fall, nearly 100 girls showed up for tryouts.

“There’s never been that many,” Lasike said.

Even his 9-year-old daughter was inspired by the U.S. women with there now being “something for her to aspire to.”

Lasike expects rugby to continue growing even more with the U.S. hosting the 2031 Men’s Rugby World Cup and the 2033 Women’s Rugby World Cup.

“It’s just (a) fun exciting product,” he said of rugby. “So if people enjoy it and they like seeing the physicality and all of that, then hopefully they’ll be able to attract some people and get some traction there.”

Lasike and the Warriors play their first home game of the season on Saturday at Zions Bank Stadium as they pursue the team’s first MLR title.