It’s been a wild and interesting year for Jonas Petrakopoulos, and there is certainly more interesting things to come.

The Dutch-American rugby player from Indiana with the Greek name, Petrakopoulos played for the Netherlands Under-18 team earlier this year, won a state and Midwest championship with Royal Irish, and then he capped off the first half of the year with a trip to Ontario with the HS All American team.

The big, powerful prop qualifies for both the USA and the Netherlands - he was born in Amsterdam but his parents are both American citizens. Playing for Royal Irish he’s seen plenty of high-level rugby, and when the opportunity arose for him to play for the Dutch national age-grade team. He did that in March. 

“It was just me trying to play rugby at a high level,” Petrakopoulos told Goff Rugby Report. “My goal is to become the best rugby player I can be, and I wanted an opportunity to play. At age-grade you don’t have to commit to won country or another, so it made sense.”

Coming back home, Petrakopoulos helped lead Royal Irish to another Midwest championship and an Indiana state championship. However, they were beaten by Granite Bay in the final of the National Championships, a result that kind of stuck with them.

“We were frustrated,” said Petrakopoulos. “We felt there was some unrealized potential in our team. As a team our goal was always to win the national championship, and we had the team to do it. But on the day we didn’t get it done. That’s something we’re going to rectify next year.”

The way the HS rugby season is formatted in Indiana, the Midwest Championships and Nationals happen before the state playoffs - it’s just the way everything fits in because of the weather. So after the Boys HS Rugby National Championships in Charlotte, NC, the Royal Irish players had to mount up and take on Brownsburg and one more team. 

“It’s always kind of difficult to mentally readjust to play two more games after a big tournament like Nationals,” said Petrakopoulos. “It takes some entail toughness. We always knew that whether we won or lost at Nationals we had to rebound and realize that the state tournament is just as important. We spoke about it as a group - we’re a tight-knit group - and we said ‘forget about last week, let’s get the emotions our, and re-focused on State. Let’s go.’”

And they did, beating Brownsburg in the semis and Penn HS in the final.

“It wasn’t a terrible season,” added the prop. “We won the Midwest. We won State. The team did well, and we’re pretty young, so we know we have the potential to give a better account of ourselves.”

For Petrakopoulos, that chance was as a HS All American in Ontario. There he helped the USA scrum perform superbly in two victories over their hosts.

“Going into the tour I knew there were things in my game personally that I wanted to work on,” said Petrakopoulos. “Team-wise there were things we needed to sort out in only a few days - defensive structure and offensive structure. In our first game together we were set up in the correct line, but we needed to work on our line speed. We were letting them run at us a bit too much. We made unforced errors and that took the pressure off them and put it on us. I think in the second game we did a better job of frustrating them.”

It was an interesting experience for the Royal Irish forward, and one he learned from.

Petrakopoulos takes off with ball in hand against Ontario. Allison Bradfield photo. And in the wet during the BHSRNC final against Granite Bay. Dan Bandoni photo.

“I learned I need to be better at just about everything,” he told Goff Rugby Report. “Speed and agility are two of the biggest things. As a prop you’ve got to be good at rucking and scrumming, but I think for every player in the USA, passing is a big thing. I think you watch the USA team and the biggest difference between us and other teams is the skill level. Athletically we can hand around with just about everyone. For the HS All Americans, we had 21 or something unforced errors. You take away half of those and it’s a huge advantage to your team.”

Will Petrakopoulos play for the Netherlands or the USA? He doesn’t need to decide right now. In fact, it’s only once a player gets an invitation to a senior A side (USA Selects, for example) or the full international 15s or 7s team, that a decision has to be made.

Right now, it’s good that he has shown himself in the HS All Americans, and won two championships with the Royal Irish. Watch for more from him in 2017.