College Men

SCRC Sets Schedules for Fall 2023

The SCRC has released its schedules for the fall of 2023.

With the University of Kentucky switching to NCR to join the rest of the league, the scheduling is a little easier and will expand to a consistent five league games per team in DIAA. Auburn has resisted pushes from some quarters to move to DIAA after some success in D2, and the D2 league will remain six teams.

The DIAA schedule will see teams play three games against their division opponents (the league is divided into East and West), and then two games against teams in the opposite division.

DIAA Schedule:
September 16
Tennessee @ South Carolina
Kentucky @ Clemson
Georgia @ LSU

September 22
Georgia @ South Carolina

September 23
Alabama @ Kentucky
LSU @ Kennesaw State

Did You Know There are 9 Men's D1 Championships?

There are nine ... nine men's D1 college championships.

This is combining D1A, NCR D1, and D1AA, 15s and 7s.

Nine national-level championships.

Colton Cariaga Announced as New Head Coach of Harvard Men's Rugby

Longtime Life University Head Coach Colton Cariaga has announced his resignation from his position in order to take the new Harvard Rugby Football Club head coaching post.

Cariaga as the first full-time head coach of Harvard Men's Rugby in the club's 150-year history. He led Life University to two D1A 15s national championships and two D1 7s championships (those in the last two seasons). He served as assistant coach on two other national championship campaigns.

How Iowa State Won ACR 7s

Close games dominated the landscape at the weekend's ACR 7s.

Iowa State ran out champions, but there was plenty competition throughout the two-day tournament.

Pool Play

Fresno State beat Nebraska 24-12 in the first round of Pool Play, with Isaiah Kruse of the Bulldogs and Zach Theis of the Cornhuskers both put on some fireworks. Iowa State beat the ACR Selects, while Oregon had to mount a comeback to overhaul ISU over ACR Selects. Oregon come back against UTSA while Minnesota pulled off an upset over Sam Houston State.

So people were on notice that these games were not going to be foregone conclusions.

Ohio Aviators U23s Set to Face Pittsburgh Forge

The Ohio Aviators select program U23s is set to play the Pittsburgh Forge Saturday.

This is the beginning of a summer of activities for the Aviators program which will also have a U19 boys team and has other U23 action planned next month.

Here is the roster for the Ohio Aviators to play the Pittsburgh Forge:

10 Teams at ACR 7s This Weekend

American Collegiate Rugby is capping off the college season with their 7s championships this weekend.

Ten teams, nine from colleges plus a selects team to round out the field, fills out a robust D1 men's bracket. In addition to teams such as Iowa State, Western Washington, and Sam Houston State, that went deep into the ACR 15s playoffs, some teams that played in CRAA's California Conference, namely championships Sacramento State and runners-up Fresno State, join in.

The tournament will run for two days at the campus of San Jose State University and will be shown live on YouTube.

Here are the links for the stream:

US Collegiate Rugby Membership By The Numbers

How many college rugby players are there in the United States?

Seems like you should be able to answer that question fairly easily, but of course it's never that easy.

How many of those players are women? A difficult answer to find, too.

What percentage of those players operate under NCR and what percentage play under other umbrellas? That's a tough one, too. 

At GRR we have been asking for membership numbers from various organizations, and after receiving them, we can let you know a little about it all.

We still have some research to do regarding growth or decline of participation numbers, and we will do that, but the overall impression is that participation numbers are down from pre-COVID; down ... but coming back.

Rugby East Releases Fall 2023 Schedule

The Rugby East Conference has released its schedule for the fall of 2023.

The conference is undergoing a couple of changes with the move of Virginia Tech to the MARC and the arrival of Life University. 

The schedule for the second year of the expanded conference showing a more formal grouping for the teams. Rugby East will divide up into two geographic divisions, North and South. Each program will play all opponents within their own division and up to two crossover matches from the opposite group.

Army, Kutztown, Navy, and St. Bonaventure will each play seven total conference matches; five divisional matches and two non-divisional crossover matches—one home and one on the road.

The remaining programs will each have six total conference matches, with Notre Dame College and Penn State only having one non-divisional crossover match.

New Midwest D1A Conference Announced

With the imminent dissolution of the Mid-South D1A Conference, a new conference will be formed for the 2023-24 collegiate season.

The Midwest Rugby Conference will include Lindenwood, Davenport, Adrian, and McKendree in a slightly more geographically compact competition. Lindenwood (St. Charles, Mo.) and Davenport (Grand Rapids, Mich.) move from the Mid-South and will be joined by former NCR D1 teams Adrian College (Adrian, Mich.) and McKendree University (Lebanoon, Ill.).

Lindenwood Head Coach Josh Macy has been spearheading the effort and added that the key goals of the conference are to drive student experience, and play more better rugby, and create a foundation for others to join.

Spring 2023 D1AA College Rankings for May

Now that the two latest D1AA finals are done we have new spring rankings.

ACR's champion is San Diego, and CRAA's champion is Sacramento State, and, just to make things interesting the different conferences involved don't really cross over that much. There are some connections, and we've followed that, plus tracking how the teams looked on their own, and how dominant they were in their competition.

In the end, we are also conscious of the fact that a team wins a trophy and then you've got a ranking that doesn't put them at #1 and that's a letdown. We understand that. But with D1AA so splintered, this ranking is one way to get an idea of where teams fall in the pecking order. Meanwhile, there's also a long list of teams from the fall and we're working on ranking all of them.

U. San Diego Wins Two Major Championships in Two Weeks

University of San Diego defeated Iowa State 41-19 last Saturday to win the ACR DIAA championship.

This was the culmination of playoffs between Heart of America (Iowa State champs), Lonestar (Sam Houston State), Gold Coast (USD), and NCRC (Western Washington). 

It was a windy day and the Toreros chose to play with the wind in the first half. That way Michael Lewis could use his boot to keep the ball in Iowa State's 22. 

That worked very nicely and from a USD scrum Paul Habeeb set up wing Nate Leff, who did the rest to score in the corner.

No. 8 Michal Ramos helped punish a ISU clearance kick that was knocked down by the wind, charging through tacklers on to the tryline. He was stopped but by a no-wra[ tackle—yellow card and a penalty, after which Seni Fagbeni tapped quickly and was over. Lewis converted and it was 12-0.

Babson Makes Its Mark in CRC Championship

Babson's run to the CRC small college championship was fairly astonishing.

Consider that the Beavers got through pool play without giving up a point. They won the final over Springfield 17-0, and the only points they gave up were in the semi, 21-5 over Coastal Carolina. The run capped off a period of four months in which they went 26-1 in 7s games, scoring over 800 points and allowing just 160.

They won the Cianci 7s in Providence, the Frosbite tournament open division, the Puerto Rico Founders Cup, and the Nor'Easter 7s.

During this run the Beavers also beat Dartmouth, Fairfield University, UConn, Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the British Virgin Islands. 

On Equal Terms: California vs Florida Conferences at CRAA Finals

A late try from captain and lock Miles Brown capped off a dramatic, back-and-forth CRAA DIAA final, putting Sacramento State over Florida State 28-24.

This was a clash of the champions from the California DIAA and Florida DIAA conferences. It's not the only match that is styled a National Championship, but certainly it was an entertaining and collision-heavy game between two very good college teams. Both sides were missing some key players, with FSU perhaps having to scramble a bit more to reform its backline. 

But both had plenty of talent.

Full Game on The Rugby Network>>