This week has been a tumultuous one in the Youth and HS segment of USA Rugby's reorganization process.

At issue is how the Youth & HS Task Force has been taking care of business. From one side it appeared that this group was set to finalize formation of a 501c3 called American Youth Rugby (AYR), and that organization would oversee the State Governing Bodies, who would then form a board and elect a representative to USA Rugby's Board. 

But on the other side, several state organizations felt they weren't being included, and said they hadn't approved or voted on AYR as the overarching oversight group. This all came to a head this week in a conference call that erupted into some harsh words and good old fashioned rugby infighting.

Either a group of state organizations scuttled the process at the last minute, or they dragged the process back on track and prevented a small cadre of individuals from controlling everything. It all depends on who you ask.

What is clear is that AYR focused on producing bylaws before producing Terms of Reference (which is a document that explains who is what, who does what, and how everyone votes). This is not how College and also Club appear to be moving forward, as they produced Terms of Reference first.

Angry at being left out of approving the bylaws, some state organizations—possibly enough to constitute a majority of high school rugby players in the country—threatened to stay away from AYR and form a separate consortium, or just deal with USA Rugby directly.

At issue may well be the natural tendency for people to assume that they have the support to move forward because no one objected. But it turns out that there were several representatives of state organizations who were just looking for a chance to view drafts of documents and chime in. And  many of those organizations had changes they wanted to make.

For example: The clause saying AYSO would have jurisdiction over "national activities" in youth and high school and sanction international and national rugby competition in the USA was one area where there was disagreement. (This may have been from an early draft.)

In the end, it seems that the schism has not happened. Those who wanted the process to change have gotten what they wanted, to a certain extent. With some of the original task force members having now left, there's a new group working this weekend to produce TORs and potentially bylaws for what will become the Youth & HS Rugby National Council.

They have about nine days to get that done.

Readers involved in HS and youth rugby should contact their SRO reps and executives to see where their organization stands.