Several highly-ranked teams or hope-to-be kicked off their seasons in Boys HS rugby. 

Here's a quick rundown of what happened, but keep in mind that several teams are still waiting for some kids to finish off winter sports season, especially wrestling. Those who are still wrestling have been in the playoffs, and so clearly they are accomplished athletes and would be expected to have an impact on their rugby teams.

Northern California

Granite Bay (C#3) has aspirations this year and despite a bit of a flu problem in the team they defeated SFGG (C#12) 40-21. 

"This is a tenacious group," said Granite Bay Head Coach Chris Miller. "We got hit with the flu bug and strep throat early in the week and it just spread."

With several players up some younger players got called up. Sophomore prop Cole McCracken put in a massive shift. Junior Riley Huestis moved from center to flanker and after four days of practice was a terror.

"SFGG is a good team. They challenged us at the breakdown," said Miller. "We need to improve on quicker ball from the breakdown. Move the ball to the next point of attack or contact quicker and more effectively."

Elsie Allen beat Pleasanton 52-28 with Ethan Hilstead scoring four tries. Danville beat San Mateo.

All-California

We have more on the SoCal and NorCal school finals here>>

Lindenwood Tournament

A warmup tournament that several teams from the Midwest take advantage of the fields and hospitality of Lindenwood University. St. Thomas Aquinas (S#12) beat Notre Dame de la Salette on Saturday and Penn HS (S#19) on Sunday. Penn is one of those teams missing some starters and were getting on the field for their first game. The KC Jr. Blues have played a couple of games and while they have lost, they lost while missing some regular players, which in essence gave time to some others.

Penn was rusty and imprecise and KC punished a dropped ball on a kick in the wind and then did it again. A high, late tackle on a breakaway and KC had a penalty try.

Eventually Penn got on the board in the second half with center Alec Hardrict and No. 8 Alex Kennach scoring. the teams traded tries late and KC won 26-15.

On Sunday, Aquinas beat Penn 31-19 to continue their very strong run of form, but this was a useful start for Penn despite the losses.

"This is what we needed," said Penn Head Coach Bart Bottorff. "We’ve only been outside three days, and lost five gym sessions the last three weeks due to snow. So to see grass and get game time today will allow us to work on things.  We need a few more weeks and I like what we might be. Credit the Blues for what they did, but we shot ourselves in the foot giving up three scores when we had the ball.” 

KC Jr. Blues then scored another win on Sunday, beating back a tough la Salette team 24-19.

Carolina Ruggerfest

There was plenty of talk within the Ruggerfest about who looked good and who was expected to struggle. With the Charlotte Tigers losing some players to the new club the Charlotte Cardinals, the Tigers were expected to struggle a bit. They didn't. Led by powerful lock Sederik Saxon and playing some stingy defense the Tigers (C#2) won all three games and gave up one try, that being to a physical and plucky Hudson team out of Ohio. The Tigers shut out a very good Maryland Exiles team and also did the same to new club Greer 76ers.

The rival Charlotte Cardinals played the best-played and most entertaining game of the weekend against Key Biscayne. The Key Biscayne Rats came up from Florida with a bit of a chip on their shoulder and a desire to player some free-wheeling, open rugby. They did just that and their ball skills with hand and boot were very strong. They beat the Raleigh Redhawks 24-17 and Four Points out of Texas 34-22. But against the Cardinals they met a team with pretty good skills of their own that payed some intense defense. Cardinals 29 Key Biscayne 12. The Cardinals also beat the Redhawks (C#22) 26-0 and Four Points 22-10.

St. Ignatius vs Royal Irish vs St. Edward

A meeting of the #4 school team and the #5 club team was not as close as expected. Royal Irish also was missing several experienced players, while Ignatius has been training for several weeks now, taking advantage of an indoor facility at the school and then turf fields that allowed them to get outside once the snow (sort of ) melted.

With a team that has almost their entire starting lineup from 2021 back, and that 2021 team was 2nd in the nation, Ignatius should expect to be good, and they also showed they're not coasting on last year with a 54-0 shutout of Royal Irish that had many around the country buzzing. It's worth pointing out that in 2021 Ignatius opened their season with a 47-0 loss to the Charlotte Tigers, so one opening loss, even a big one, doesn't kill the momentum for Royal Irish. One of the players missing on Saturday as their starting flyhalf, Tommy Hannon, who was at a family wedding. He was back on Sunday and Royal Irish beat St. Edward (S#16) 26-17.

St. Ed's blooded eight players in the that game and really should take some positives from that result.

SCIRF

The back-and-forth between Cathedral Catholic (S#15) and St. Augustine (S#14) continued with Cathedral beating the Saints. On January 28 Cathedral beat St. Augustine 33-10. A week ago St. Augustine beat Cathedral 33-14 and clinched 1st in the regular season. But Cathedral won the follow-up final 19-7.

La Costa Canyon took the Gold division with a 52-25 defeat of Mission Bay.

Texas

Woodlands (C#18) vs Strake Jesuit (S#11) was another clash we at GRR liked but turned out to be one-sided. Woodlands lost the week before, and while they were missing some players in that loss to West Houston, they certainly wanted to erase that memory and a 54-3 win pretty much did that. Strake was hit with three key injuries in the early going and kind of lost their way after that. The Cole Scharffenorth, Tommy Kratt, Magnus Anderson, and Daniel Feletoa ran the offense nicely. 

Strake's inside back combination of flyhalf Marc Arsham and center Jake Foster and Jared Broussard were solid.  

Dallas Jesuit beat Rocky Rugby 47-0, while St. Thomas of Houston is putting together a pretty impressive season so far. Saturday St. Thomas beat Cy-Fair 33-0.

Cy-Fair could not get away from penalty trouble—they were pinged for 28 penalties in the game. St. Thomas was led by Tommy Erb with forwards Alex Yankowsky and Ted Naeher doing all the unheralded work at lock, creating go-forward, putting Cy-Fair under pressure, and playing hard-nosed defense. No. 8 and captain Charlie Batterson scored three tries.

Florida

Wellington (C#39) beat Cape 51-5 and Jacksonville defeated Tampa. But the big result was a barnburner of a clash between Boca (C#19) and Cardinal Gibbons (S#7). The game was hugely physical and both teams played excellent defense. It was a back-and-forth battle.

"We knew Cardinal Gibbons would be big and strong so we paid special attention to our defense and the physical aspect of the game recently," said Boca Head Coach Matt Guest. 

The kicking game was crucial too and near the end of the game, down 12-10, Boca turned the game around. Vicente Allué and Logan Ballinger both kicked well and one such kick from Allué went about 70 meters over the deep defense, and Ballinger got on his horse and chased it down to score. The try made it 14-12 and Boca eventually won 17-12. 

With the result Boca Raton is now in 1st with a 5-0-1 record. Wellington is 5-2, idle Okapi 4-1-1, and Cardinal Gibbons 4-1. 

Gibbons continues to play well but penalties remain a problem.

"The difference was Cardinal Gibbons' lack of discipline and Boca has a very good kicking game and was able to score 12 points from penalties," said Gibbons Head Coach Eric Aumann. "We have lacked discipline in nearly all of our games but we have been much more physically dominant than our opponents in those matchups that it didn’t hurt us. This time they have a very strong kicker that can make it from nearly anywhere inside 40."

 And More ...

Several other cross-border or warmup games went on around the country. Santa Monica visited the DC area and had a tough time against Georgetown Prep and Gonzaga. Conestoga beat Berks in Pennsylvania, with Conestoga putting in a good performance but, yes, once again, that issue of a team waiting for other season to end raising its head.

Loyola Blakefield is looking ahead to a solid Maryland Interscholastic league season and beat Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley 45-10. Xavier beat St. Augustine of New Jersey, while defending Rugby PA champs Gregory the Great shut out Kingfishers from the Kansas City area 17-0. Fort Hunt (C#19) adged C#4 Aspetuck in another game of note.

Tempe visited Mira Costa in Southern California and won 75-10. Denver East opened their season with Regis Jesuit in Colorado — a longtime rivalry for these two teams — and East won 24-19.

Two teams dubbed Eastside faced off in Portland, Ore. The Eastside Lions from just east of Seattle took on Eastside Tsunamis of the Portland area. 

Kieran O'Meara's strong running in the center got the Lions going forward and helped set up his side's tries. Eastside scored five tries and got 14 points from boot of flyhalf Nick Davis to win 39-15. Liam Herring was effective at fullback for the Tsunami.

In Tennessee Raptor Rugby opened their 15s campaign with a convincing 45-7 win over Riverdale Rugby. The Raptors defense was led by junior Bailey Black, who topped the team in tackles, and on offense by a pair of tries each from Mike McWilliams and Max Orefice. Junior Nick Orefice was 4-6 in conversions.