There are 56 girls HS-age teams in the Tropical 7s this weekend.
The biggest bracket is the U18 Girls Open, with 24 teams, including upto a third of them being Canadian.
The U16 Girls bracket includes 20 teams with about 40% being Canadian, and teams from Newfoundland, Idaho, British Columbia, Michigan, Colorado, and Utah.
The smallest bracket is the Elite bracket, but you'd expect that. Hawkeyes has brought it in a big way with three U16 teams, two U18 Open teams, and one in the U18 Elite bracket. The Idaho-based group works in part with the Celtic Barbarians, which has been active in these sorts of tournaments.
The Rugby Advantage, run by Life University Head Coach Ryszard Chadwick, has two teams in the Elite bracket, and there is also Atlantis, MacDowell out of BC, Majestics and the Cannibals, both out of Utah. Badger Rugby Academy (Wisconsin) is very talented and there's also the All-Midwest Thunderbirds to represent the region. The Tsunami Toronto Reds (part of the Misfits program) comes out of Ontario, while the NRU Thunder is also from Ontario, the Niagara Falls area specifically.
Clearly the warm Florida weather is attracting the Canadian girls teams.
