The choices we had to make at the top of the GRR-FloRugby Boys HS Club Rankings were fairly easy; it was further down that was hard.

Royal Irish was always knocking on the door of #1. We just didn't put them there because they needed to knock off someone with emphasis during the season. That didn't really happen. Royal Irish won games, but they all seemed to be a bit too close for comfort, or were against teams they were expected to beat.

So the HS Nationals come up and Royal Irish puts it all together. They beat the #2 team, and the #1 team. That's pretty emphatic. We're not distressed about Fort Hunt's ranking as #1 much of the spring. They deserved it, and proved, by making the final at nationals and losing by only two points, that they deserve to be there. Could Fort Hunt have won it all if they'd had Connor McManus at scrumhalf? Maybe. We can't denigrate the play of anyone in the Fort Hunt backline, but, yes, McManus is considered one of the best players in high school rugby. Had he not suffered an injury he would be going with the USA U20 team to Alberta in June. So, maybe Fort Hunt wins with McManus ... maybe. It's enough of a question to say we were strongly justified in having Fort Hunt #1 when we did.

Granite Bay was close for much of the season, but was also another team that needed to put it all together at the right time. The Grizzlies fixed their injury woes, and did well to beat KC and Doylestown, and lost to Fort Hunt by just two points. KC gets dinged pretty hard for losing to United and almost losing to Elsie Allen. That was a tough move to make, but there were tougher ones.

What do you do with South Bay, which played well but also didn't have super-strong competition in Tier II? We decided to nudged the Spartans up a little. What do you do with Elsie Allen, considering they lost in the NorCal DII playoffs, and thus we should be moving other teams up with them. In the end we put SacPD PAL ahead of Elsie Allen because SacPD had won, convincingly, the clash between the two. Central Parkway (despite their crash and burn in the NorCal DII Final), and Chico follow on their coattails. Elsie Allen gets a little boost ahead of those two for going out and playing at nationals, almost beating KC, and beating West End. 

Media joins the top 50 after winning Pennsylvania.

See the full rankings here.