Westlake HS won the Texas state championship by a point, and it would be fair to say that without Ryan Rees, it wouldn’t have happened like that.

Of course, we could say that about anyone on the Westlake team, but we are picking Rees. The Chaps scrumhalf has had a good example to follow. His brother, Alex, is a star scrumhalf at Arkansas,  and also filled that role at Westlake.

But they are different players. Rees the elder is perhaps a little sneakier, which is maybe a function of being smaller. Rees the younger, slated to attend Life University and play rugby there, has a bit more strength to his game.

But what Westlake Head Coach Jason Spodick likes is his scrumhalf’s understanding of the game. 

“How he goes, we go,” said Spodick. “He is our overall leader and he can read the way the game is flowing. He’s tough and skilled.” 

Rees slotted in at flyhalf for the Rugby Texas select side, but that position shift didn’t work for Westlake - Rees’s ability to work with any flyhalf and feed the ball to his teammates was negated by sliding away from the base of the scrum, so back to #9 he went.

Rees’s ability to see what’s available was most obvious near the end of his team’s comeback win over Lake Travis. Westlake was sending the ball wide phase after phase, and eventually the Lake Travis defenders started to cheat outward to get a jump on the ball’s movement. About 15 meters out from the Lake Travis line, Rees chose his spot, picked up from the ruck, and faked the pass he’d been sending wide all day. The defense bit, Rees was through, and with his conversion, within a try at 21-17.

It was a smart move by a smart rugby player, and a player who is our ...

Eagle Impact Rugby Academy Player of the Week.

See Rees's try here: