The Boys single-school HS season in Southern California gets underway, sort of, this weekend.

 

Already one game has been played, as St. Augustine defeated HTH/Point Loma 28-26 in a non-league warmup. But for the most part warmups will be a rarity for teams that are just coming out of football season.

 

In fact, football already has had an influence on the league schedule. In the Boys Varsity White (which is the league for teams with 70-99% of their players from one school), the intriguing Wilson HS v Palos Verdes game has been postponed because the Palos Verdes football team is in the state playoffs.

 

Palos Verdes Head Coach Jeremy Wilkinson said about two-thirds of his program will be tied up with the football playoff run. While Wilkinson hopes a strong football team will translate to a strong rugby team, there’s a tradeoff. 

 

“It takes two to three weeks to convert from football habits to rugby habits,” he said. “So we should be OK by the middle of January.”

 

St. John Bosco is also in the football playoffs, meaning Wilson’s second game of the season will also be pushed back.

 

View Park Prep has moved form the Varsity Red division (where teams are 100% from one school) to the White because all of the other Red Division teams are in San Diego, and SoCal is trying to pilot a league in a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) region there. The hope is that this will prompt the San Diego CIF Section to adopt rugby as an official sport.

 

The move allows View Park to concentrate on the Los Angeles Division in Varsity White, and also to field some of the players from Frederick Douglas High School, where the ICEF coaching program is trying to build rugby. View Park was a contender in the Red Division last year, but have graduated a significant proportion of their squad (20 players). They take on Dana Hills, which went 6-0 in the Varsity Blue Division (the SoCal developmental league) last year before falling to Mira Costa in the playoffs. 

 

Mira Costa has also moved up and will take on Stern MASS this weekend.

 

View Park has just started practicing after their football team made the playoffs. They are led by the silky-running Jabari Fernandez, who plays flyhalf or center and will captain the squad. Hooker Miles Connolly is a snappy ball-carrier with a good eye for the game, whole Tay Braggs takes over the No. 8 position after Cameron Griffin graduated and moved on to play football at UCLA.

 

Watch out also for outside back Malik Montez-Hendon. 

 

Many of the other teams in SoCal will be at the San Diego Classic, a 7s and 10s tournament in San Diego. Teams like Torrey Pines, Desert Sands, HTH/Point Loma, Patrick Henry, Rancho Bernardo, and UC/Clairmont Honey Badgers are expected to play in that.

In the Blue Division, Valhalla and Coronado are slated to open the season this weekend.
 

 

(Club teams not listed. Their season begins in March)

 

Cathedral Catholic

Del Norte 

Fallbrook

LCC Mavericks

Poway Titans

St. Augustine

Torrey Pines

 

Citrus Valley Blackhawks

Dead Rabbits

Desert Sands Harlequins

 

Dana Hills

Mira Costa

Palos Verdes

St. John Bosco

Stern MASS

View Park Prep

Wilson

 

HTH/Pt. Loma

Mission Vista

Patrick Henry

Rancho Bernardo

San Pasqual

UC/Clairmont


Varsity Blue (Developmental, can't commit to 70% from name school)
San Diego North
Alta Vista
Carlsbad
San Marcos
Temecula
Tesoro
Westview

San Diego South
Coronado Islanders
Hoover
Mira Mesa
Valhalla