Club 7s Men's Signes Cup Wide Open

As many as 208 rugby players could be in action in the Men's Club 7s Championships Signes Cup bracket, with 16 teams set to take the field tomorrow in Tukwila, Wash.

The 16 teams can have a roster of up to 13, with at least nine having to be US citizens. Three can be non-citizens and a fourth can either be a green card holder or a US citizen.

As reported earlier, the teams are varied in terms of experience and level of play, with a squad like Atlanta Old White being heavy in recent Life University players, while outfits such as defending 2019 champs Washington Athletic Club fielding local players who have been involved in the Club 7s Championships for years.

(The Seattle-based 7s team, which was Old Puget Sound Beach, then Seattle-OPSB, then Seattle Saracens, and now Washington Athletic Club, have won this tournament nine times.) On that WAC team is Mike Palefau, who was the MVP of this tournament in ... 2008. Yet he's hardly lost a step. Interestingly, of the last 26 champions, only four teams are represented in the Signes Cup bracket—WAC, Old Blue of New York, Belmont Shore, and the Chicago Lions. The Lions (Champions in 2007) have a fairly young team with several current or just-graduated collegiates. Old Blue (Champions in 2005) will see one of their historically strongest 7s players, Gavan D'Amore-Morrison, on the opposite coast playing for Life West. 

But Old Blue has built a young, talented group around some experience (such as Derek Lipscomb) and with the likes of Chase Schor Haskin on the squad have a new look. Belmont Shore is seasoned, with Max Paronelli, Danny Thomas, Ben Weischedel, and Rob Newcomb have all been there before. Unity will be their passage through.

Of the teams in the Signes Cup, four others have also made the final since 1994—Schuylkill River (once, in 2011), NOVA (1995, 1999), Life West (2019), and the Denver Barbarians (bridesmaids in 2001, 2004, 2013, 2015, and 2017). Just to twist the knife a bit more, the Barbarians were also runners-up three times in the 1980s. They have never won this tournament despite being among the favorites almost every year—something that is not news to anyone in the Barbos organization, as they are painfully aware of this gap in their trophy case.

Here are the rosters: