Because the Southern California's Boys HS season is split up into three, no, four leagues, it's easy to see it as small, but taken in aggregate we see that this past weekend eight games involving 16 teams.

SCIRF

Cathedral shut out Mira Costa 50-0. Mira Costa has been hit by COVID of late but, as Head Coach Duke Dulgarian said, even full strength they would have been climbing a mountain. Cathedral did well on defense (as show by the shutout). 

"Cathedral spent a lot of practice time over the past few weeks working on their defensive schemes and alignment," said Cathedral Head Coach Glenn Irvine.

Sophomore wing Matt Hammond scored three tries in this game.

St. Augustine also won by a shutout, beating Fallbrook 38-0. Scrumhalf Estevan Torrance and flyhalf Sam Johns controlled the pace and rhythm of the Saints' attack. The kicking game from Johns really kept Fallbrook off balance, and Torrance was solid kicking off the tee.

The Saints forwards were able to keep the Fallbrook pack from breaking the line, while the center pairing of Peyton DeLuca and Grant Gauthier were excellent—DeLuca is in his first year and developing well as he breaks the gain line and puts in sure tackles. Freshman Caelyb Aguirre also fit into the backline as a punishing runner.

The Saints' support running made it all click and you could see that in how the players connected for tries. Lock Andres Drab set up the first score on a draw and pass to wing Jason Peck. The final score came off another offload, this form prop Braydon Pinto who fed lock Will Strack in the wide channel. Strack held his line to draw the defender and fed Caelyb Aguirre for the try. The play of the game would likely be the fourth try for the Saints. The Saints attacked wide off the weak side. Torrance called the play on the fly and fed hooker Donovan Yousif, who changed the point of attack and prop Chuckie Guay ran an unders line to receive the ball. As three defenders were bringing down Guay, he flipped it back Peck for his second.

That's it for the SCIRF Varsity league—the standings are not really relevant at the moment because everyone has played either one or two games—Cathedral leads at 1-1 because they have more bonus points than St. Augustine or Fallbrook. Cathedral plays St. Augustine this coming weekend but everyone plays everyone twice so there's more to go.

In the SCIRF Gold it's all very close. with Coronado edging La Costa Canyon 17-14, and Mission Bay holding off Steele Canyon 36-29.

SoCal Open

The Open league is basically teams that are shooting toward being single-school. It all is up in the air, much like the SCIRF Varsity league, because we haven't seen a lot of league games. Yes the Crean Saints (a team mostly made up of players from Crean Lutheran HS) beat La Jolla on January 7, but that wasn't a league game. La Jolla opened up their league season with a 50-7 win over the RC Bears. 

It was a good result for a young La Jolla team that graduated 16 players from last year. The halfback combo of Nico DiMatteo and Marc Oriol (shades of the St. Augustine game above) kicked very well to control field position. La Jolla No. 8 Adrian Davis was a handful with ball in hand while flanker Elliot Trudeau and center Ian Kyle led the team defensively. 

Crean, for their part, won comfortably over Westview with a pretty young team, starting seven freshmen and with five players suiting up for only their second rugby game. Flyhalf Lucca Deocarizza ran the attack well. The defensive effort was probably the best aspect of Crean's performance. They put Westview under pressure throughout.

And center Jacob Bower scored four tries and helped set up at least three of the other four tries. Deocarizza scored two and added four conversions for 18 points, and scrumhalf Ryan Barron also scored twice.

Crean takes on RC Bears this coming weekend while St. Anthony plays La Jolla.

SoCal D1 Boys

The single-school teams in SoCal Youth Rugby saw the Cen10 vs Carlsbad game canceled. But San Marcos didn't have a game so Carlsbad and San Marcos played a game with open subs. Carlsbad led after halftime, changed the lineup and San Marcos won the second half and, overall, the game 29-28. Meanwhile, in league play Torrey Pines defeated San Clemente 54-5. We've got details on that game here>>.

Torrey Pines plays Carlsbad in a non-league game, but a game that both will want to take very seriously.