The buzz at Carolina Ruggerfest was definitely about the new high school boys team from Atlanta with the distinctive green and purple alien themed kit.
Before we get into what’s going on with Atlanta Youth Rugby and its newest team from the club's new president – we had to ask what the inspiration for the new team look was.
“When I moved from Charlotte less than two years ago to Atlanta – I made a list of all the things about Atlanta I liked – top of the list – my favorite band, OutKast is from there – one of their albums is called ATLiens – that whole thing has a vibe and represents the city – also - an alien head kind of looks like a rugby ball – so we changed it up a bit to ATL Aliens – makes total sense,” said new AYR Club President and Aliens Coach Erik Saxon.
The coach who for many years led the Charlotte Tigers and Charlotte Junior Rugby Association was asked to take over for the outgoing coach at Alpharetta Phoenix and not long after that asked to take over as president of AYR for the outgoing president there as well.
“I was planning on just quietly riding off into the sunset after the Tigers & CJRA & the move, maybe starting a small team down in Peachtree City where I live – but that wasn’t in the stars apparently,” he joked.
Phoenix has since come under AYR giving the organization four distinct geographic locations; Alpharetta, Buckhead, Inman Park, and Red Top. Given the traffic and actual distance, that covers a fairly large footprint. Like many clubs all over the world, COVID had a pretty big impact on numbers and all the AYR clubs are still bouncing back from that. Buckhead is the largest of the geographic locations. Their high school side War Eagle is pretty strong and has a full high school boys varsity and JV side as well as U8s, U10s, U12s, and U14s, called the Buckhead Bulls.
Under local president Christian Cram, this is a gold-standard program.
"He and his coaches and families and players have worked hard to grow and to excel on and off the pitch," said Saxon. "They’ve had some real quality wins this season and gave Okapi all they could handle as a touring side a couple of weeks ago. Our main job now is to get ALL of our locations up to that standard and beyond."
This is where ATL Aliens comes in. Alpharetta already has a team name – Phoenix; Inman Park is the Knights; Red Top is the Lions. In a perfect world, AYR would not need any Aliens at all, cool kit notwithstanding. The issue is numbers. Alpharetta has around 12 high school players. Inman Park has five, Red Top three, and a new side partnered with AYR in Augusta also has three. So, the Aliens are a true Motley making it possible for all these boys from all these locations to be able to practice together and play matches together. It has been tough – some players commute as long as two hours each way to practice – but it has also been great.
