Gonzaga High School out of DC is several thousand miles away in British Columbia right now.

The perennial national title contender is on a short tour of the Canadian province, playing Shawnigan Lake School and St. George's on Friday and Monday. These are two of the strongest HS rugby programs in British Columbia—Shawnigan Lake is on Vancouver Island and St. George's on the mainland in Vancouver.

Gonzaga flew into Seattle earlier this week and the Seattle Seawolves rolled out the welcome mat, opening their facility at Starfire Sports Complex for the Eagles to practice.

"Kevin Flynn with the Seawolves has been amazing and it was great to be there right after the Seawolves' practice and see them and Pate," said Gonzaga HS Head Rugby Coach Peter Baggetta.

Pate would of course be former USA player Alipate Tuilevuka, who is the Head Coach of the Seawolves.

After training in the Seattle area the Gonzaga team look the long bus ride to Port Angeles, where they hopped a ferry to Vancouver Island. They trained at Shawnigan Lake on Thursday with the Friday game to follow. Then they will ferry back to Vancouver for the Monday's game.

"It's beautiful here and we're looking forward to two tough games," said Baggetta. "It's definitely a challenge."

Gonzaga has logged impressive victories over the likes of Fort Hunt, Royal Irish, Vienna, and, most recently, the Raleigh Redhawks. But nestled in there is a 34-5 loss to St. Ignatius that had Baggetta shaking his head.

"We played one of the worst games we've ever played," said Baggetta. "St. Ignatius deserves a lot of credit, but we didn't win a lineout, we turned the ball over in our own 22, and we went down to 13 players due to yellow cards."

Gonzaga has rebounded somewhat since then, and Baggetta said he likes what he sees.

"We are lucky that our top side has 44 players," he said. "We still don't know who our top 15 guys are and that's good. When you look ahead to Nationals, you can't win with just 15 or 23 players. You need at least 28. What we're seeing is that when we bring someone else in, there's no dropoff. So we have some thing sto figure out, but that's a good thing."

Leading the way for Gonzaga up front are Nate Deegan at hooker, lock Miles Malone, and prop JP Vinter. They form the leadership and power base in the pack, although junior No. 8 Burke Carroll, who was a starter last season, too, has continued to play well.

In the backs, Benji Kemp is a strong physical presence, fullback Lucas Barsantini is "tough as nails," says his coach, and Emmett Cook has, like Carroll, taken experience as a sophomore and built that into an effective junior season. Making it all click last year was scrumhalf Jack Ries. He has graduated, but his younger brother Joey has stepped in quite nicely.