The name De La Salle is a well-known one in high school sports, but hasn't always been in rugby.

Football is where DLS has made its name. The program has set records all over the place, including holding the longest winning streak in HS football by a massive margin. In the last 11 years of the CIF Open Division, De La Salle has made the state final 10 times, winning six (but, to rankle their fans, losing the last four).

In rugby, we've seen De La Salle alumni make an impact in later years. Cal, especially, has welcomed De La Salle athletes (sometimes with rugby experience, sometimes not) to find success on the Bears' rugby field. Current Cal standouts Keanu Andrade and Damon Wiley went to De La Salle. Luke Freeman, Luke Ogburn, Michael Puckett, and Kevin Tholski are also current Bears who are DLS alumni. 

Chris Biller and Derek Asbun, both All Americans at Cal and later USA Eagles, went to De La Salle. 

But ... you notice we didn't say "played rugby at De La Salle." The Spartans rugby program wasn't always as tightly linked to the school as it is now. HS clubs in the area often were a better draw for the top players. Andrade and Freeman played for the Danville Oaks, for example, and that wasn't a rarity.

But the current version of the De La Salle rugby Spartans is different. Now a school-supported program, the rugby team has the support of other coaches at the school, and more and more De La Salle students are opting to play with their school team. 

The fruits were borne out this season, with De La Salle opening the season with Northern California's short single-school cup competition. De La Salle blew through to the final, where they upset Jesuit in the final. While Jesuit hasn't been as invincible in Northern California rugby as DLS has been in NorCal football, the Marauders are defending national single-school champs.

De La Salle Shocks Jesuit

But the Spartans pulled it off, and then backed that up with a last-second 21-19 win over Carlsbad to take the All-California title.

De La Salle Wins All-California Final In Dramatic Finish

Now, rugby is rugby and football is football, and we've seen before that blindly following football like a pilot fish chasing a shark's scraps is not the way to go to build the sport, it's also undeniable that earning respect from high school football coaches helps ensure that more high-schoolers will play rugby and become rugby fans. That's what we want. To see De La Salle create a program that is strong, and that the players enjoy is a good thing for the sport.

But more than that, we might also have seen the emergence of a new challenger in Northern California, one that will be good for some years. The NorCal Premier was already the toughest high school league in the country, and the emergence of De La Salle has only emphasized that fact.