2026 will long be remembered as the year in which Tuks’s swimmers and rugby players gave new meaning to the expression ‘pushing the boundaries’.
Why, some might wonder? Well, the answer is simple. Tuks’s men’s rugby team won every competition they entered. For the first time, Tuks won the Varsity Cup, the USSA Tournament, and the Carlton Cup in the same year. They also won the Lucas Strachan Trophy. Tuks can also boast the most Varsity Cup wins of any team—this year marked their sixth victory. They did so in 2012, 2013, 2017, 2021, 2022 and now.
The team’s journey over the past four years is like a sporting fairy tale. In 2023, Tuks were down and out. They lost all seven Varsity Cup matches and were relegated to the Shield Tournament, which they won in 2024. Last year, they contested the Varsity Cup semifinal and are now champions.
The Tuks Rugby manager, Conrad Boshoff, attributes all the success to one thing, and that is, “The team doesn’t know how to give up. It didn’t matter what happened. The team gave as good as they got in every game. The other big thing is the camaraderie. This is not a team of individual stars. They are a ‘Band of Brothers’. When they play, they do so knowing that their teammates have their back.”
Tuks’s swimming program is unequivocally the best in South Africa. The results speak for themselves. Tuks’s Pieter Coetze is the only South African swimmer to break a world record this year; he did so at the Swimming World Cup series (25m pool), winning the 50m backstroke in 22.09 seconds.
At the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Tuks’s swimmers won 15 medals (4 gold, 5 silver, and 6 bronze). This is an incredible performance, considering that Tuks’ combined medal tally (all sports) at the previous two Games was 19 (8 gold, 6 silver and 5 bronze). It’s no surprise that Coetze stood out. He won all three backstroke events (50, 100 and 200 metres), setting Games records each time.
