Quietly, for the last five plus year, middle school rugby has been blooming in pockets throughout the South.  Around Atlanta, Charlotte, the Raleigh/ Durham area, Richmond and other Virginia cities, and across Tennessee there are middle school rugby football clubs that all have multiple seasons under their belts.  The explosive growth at the under high school level is not flying under the radar anymore.  The first crop of players from these clubs are now making a huge impact on their states’ junior varsity all-star teams.

The North Carolina middle-schoolers, West and East, played each other in a showcase at the NACRA 7s Championships in Cary, NC in June. Alex Goff photos.

While this growth is happening simultaneously in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina, to tell this story let’s look at North Carolina as a case study.  At the South Regional Cup Tournament this past June, the vast majority of players on the North Carolina junior varsity high school side – starters and reserves – all had played at least a year of middle school ball before high school.  It showed on the pitch.  

As detailed in recent Goff Rugby Report articles, the junior varsity teams were the stars of this year’s crop of RCTs, with North Carolina winning their tournament and getting ranked #4 in the GRR JV Select-Side rankings.

So, where did these players come from?

Not by plan or coordination, but as a happy coincidence, three very strong youth programs started around 2010 in North Carolina.  There are others, but in terms of impact and numbers the big three are Clayton, North Raleigh, CJRA (Charlotte Junior Rugby Association).  Each of these clubs fields more than a hundred elementary and middle school players every season.  In fact, CJRA fields a 10 team/ 300+ player intramural Winter season and has nearly 200 middle school players on 5 teams in the Spring. 

Initially, these clubs mainly kept to themselves and played a couple of matches when they could against other clubs.  But, the majority of their rugby was made up of internal matches and practices.  That did not last for long.  As word spread from one end of the state to the other about what was happening on the youth scene, a robust state-wide youth league sprang up and there were matches every Saturday for any side that wanted to play.

With a full-on seasons full of teams to play all around the state, the word on rugby spread.  Success was met with greater success and kids from football, baseball, lacrosse, wrestling, and other youth sports coming over in numbers to give this rugby thing a try.  By this past season in North Carolina, the quality and quantity of middle school players reached a point where it became the best choice to have two regional all-star middle school teams instead of one.  So, the state board created the Eastern team – made up of Clayton, North Raleigh and smaller clubs in and around Raleigh/ Durham, and the Western team, made up of players from various CJRA teams in the greater Charlotte area.  The fear any time you split your pool of players is that the resulting sides would have diluted talent.  The opposite seemed to happen in North Carolina’s case.

Both talent pools in the east and west of the state were stacked.  Both all-star tryouts were very well attended and both were forced to make over 20 cuts just to get down to a roster of 28 each.  Add to that the ease of getting to practice.  In years past, players from the Charlotte area and Raleigh/ Durham area each had to be driven more than hours to meet in the middle for practice. The result was players late or missing practice and not enough practices.  By dividing, each team had near perfect attendance at all practices and had triple the amount of practices and the two state teams still held on joint practice and had a scrimmage leading up to the RCT South. 

These all-star teams played friendlies versus other states leading up to the RCT as well.  The only loss recorded by a North Carolina middle school team all season was when the Western NC team beat the Eastern NC team in the RCT final. 

Of note, at the beginning of the 2017 season, the majority of high school varsity starters playing rugby in North Carolina will have been playing rugby since 6th grade.  These are now athletes who pick rugby as their primary sport.  While there will always be room for those seniors who are done with football and want to try rugby for their last season of high school sports, and kids are welcome to try it out at any age, the explosive grass-roots youth rugby movement is flipping the paradigm for rugby in North Carolina. 

Worth mentioning, Georgia middle school rugby for many years started and ended with the Phoenix of Alpharetta Colts program.  This season, three other Georgia middle school clubs have joined the party.  Virginia has had a robust middle school program for years, but has had to travel north to find quality matches outside of their state.  Now, the hope in the South is that they will look closer to home and join in the synergy the region is enjoying.  Tennessee’s middle school program is stout.  While they lost both matches they played against North Carolina teams – each margin of victory was less than a try and each match came down to the last play. 

Other southern states are not there yet.  Louisiana is working on growing the youth game.  Florida is talking about entering an all-star team next season, but other states in the region are sadly quiet…for now.

- Erik Saxon