Los Angeles and Back Bay will play for the Southern California HS club title next week after both teams won nailbiting semifinals on Saturday.

Back Bay (ranked the #7 multi-school team by Goff Rugby Report) defeated #4 single-school team Fallbrook in overtime.

In a wild game, Fallbrook scored early and held onto a slim 5-0 lead throughout the first half. Back Bay eventually responded. Playing with their full complement of HS All Americans, including Aaron Matthews, Liam Jimmons, and prop Dallas Moliitele and Christopher Taliu they took the lead, only to see Fallbrook come back to tie it. 

Late in the game, Back Bay led 17-10, and it appeared time might be up. However, the Sharks opted to kick downfield rather than into touch, and Fallbrook returned the kick for the game-tying try.

So on to overtime, and in the overtime Back Bay was forced to take Matthews off. Travis Heer stepped in and, a week after scoring three tries in their quarterfinal, helped get the attack going for the Sharks. That set up the winning try by Raymond Tufula.

“It was a great game,” said Back Bay Head Coach Jeff Bonnett. “Fallbrook is a great team and Steven Branham is an amazing player. What they’ve accomplished this season - they should be very proud. But we’re pretty pleased with how we played.”

The game was played in wet, windy conditions, not what Southern California teams are used to, but was played at a high standard nonetheless.

Back Bay will face off with Los Angeles, which beat Santa Monica on the final play of the game.

“We were lucky,” said LA Coach Paul Breen. “I don’t think we deserved to win. We were sloppy, we played an ugly game. Santa Monica were very good tactically.”

In fact, Santa Monica scored more tries than Los Angeles (this is not confirmed but we believe it was six unconverted tries to five tries for LA, four converted). But Santa Monica also hurt themselves with ill discipline, at one point being down to 12 men. Amazingly, when they had three players in the sin bin, LA couldn’t score.

“We were able to score 15-on-15,” said Breen. “But we couldn’t get through them when they only had 12.”

Isaiah Leilua had an outstanding game at flyhalf for Los Angeles, and kicked those crucial conversions. Brothers Jonah and Justus Tavai were outstanding in the attack, while Jarett Balter also had a very good game for LA.

The teams traded tries all day, and with the game nearing its conclusion Santa Monica led 30-26. Los Angeles had one more attack, and aided by a series of Santa Monica penalties, got into the Dolphin 22. There, another penalty led to hooker Juwan Johnson, the captain and a stalwart player for both LA and the Mira Costa single-school program, tapped quickly and went over for the winner.

“We’ve just got some great players on this team,” said Breen. “And they produced.”