College Rugby has certainly received a boost since groups of teams have aligned themselves with established football conferences.

This isn’t always possible, but is certainly a good move for the likes of the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, and, the PAC-12. This weekend the PAC Rugby Conference 7s arrives at Witter Rugby Field at the University of California with 11 of the 12 colleges in attendance.

And while the likes of Arizona, Washington State, and Stanford have shown flashes, it looks as though the tournament will come down to three teams - Cal, UCLA, and Arizona State.

Cal has had a good fall and puts out a talented and experienced team led by Jake Anderson.

“I think we have done mostly well this fall in the first two tournaments, but we haven’t made a secret of wanting to defend our conference championship this weekend,” Head Coach Jack Clark said when he announced his 15-man squad. “There are a lot of very good 7s teams in the conference so we have our work cut out for us.”

Former USA age-grader standouts Nikolas Boyer and Anthony Salaber are on the team and continuing to earn more minutes. And Russell Webb, Alec Gletzer, and Anthony Battaglia are part of a very strong team.

UCLA brings back players such as Niall and Cian Barry, Ben Francis, Pierre Courpron, and the spark plug, Grant Penney. Most of these players have been playing as a unit for several years now. They beat Cal earlier in the season, and could well win it.

Arizona State was a bit of a surprise at the Battle in the Bay (won by Cal), where they pushed Cal 19-14 in pool play, and beat Utah, Central Washington, and UCLA on the way to making the final. In that final, the score stood 26-12 after about 13 minutes, close to a full regular game. But a final in 7s is ten-minute halves, and there Cal were the stronger late, pulling away to win 40-12.

Overall, ASU 7s Coach Ian Gregor was pleased.

“We had a tough group of teams to get through to the final and I am really proud of the boys with all their effort,” said Gregor. “They set a lot of high expectations after last season, and several of the players took the onus on themselves to get better.”

Nick Howard played 7s during the summer with Tempe. Keenan Mayfield did the same in Sacramento, and the Sandstrom brothers, Adam and Alex, did likewise with the Chicago Lions.
“Their leadership has really helped,” added Gregor.

Winning the PAC Conference, whether in 15s or 7s, matters to these teams, and all are up for the contest.

Fitness and defense will be key, said Gregor, and especially fitness battling at the end of the later games. It’s not so much one game, as all of them. Gregor has been putting his players through longer rotations in training get get them used to playing more grueling halves.

The PAC Rugby 7s Championships is split into two pools. Pool A has California, Arizona State, Oregon State, Arizona, Stanford, and USC. Pool B has UCLA, Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State.

Each team plays four games - so Pool A teams won’t play every opponent in their pool.

On Day Two, the bottom teams from Pool A and the bottom team from Pool B will play in a three-game round-robin for placement.

The top two teams from each pool advance to the semis, while the 3rd- and 4th-place teams from each pool go for the Plate.