EIRA Confirms 2017 Tours
EIRA Confirms 2017 Tours
The Eagle Impact Rugby Academy program has confirmed a series of competitive assemblies for 2017.
While EIRA exists as academies around the country helping committed players elevate their skills, more and more we are seeing EIRA teams compete in 7s tournaments and on 15s tours. This coming year, we'll see that happen again.
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In March, EIRA will field a U16, U17, and U18 teams at the Las Vegas Invitational Boys HS 7s brackets. In addition, in 7s, EIRA will enter a team in the Victoria 7s in British Columbia in July, and the North American HS 7s series, finishing with the Finals in Salt Lake City in August.
In 15s, the EIRA Southern California team will compete in the Rocky Mountain Challenge RCT in June. In July, EIRA will field a U16 and U17 team to tour Ontario. Those teams will feature players from the eastern part of the country. Also in July, players from the western part of the country will fill out EIRA U16 and U17 teams in a tour to British Columbia - much like they did this past summer.
In late July, an EIRA U17 team will travel to Belfast, Ireland to play Ulster and Leinster academies.
There will be other games as EIRA teams are expected to play touring teams through the year.
"We're excited to expand our tours for 2017," said Salty Thompson, who runs EIRA and also serves as the Boys HS All American Head Coach. "EIRA's goal is to find and help develop the best young prospects in the country, 8th grade through 12th; provide opportunities to play representative rugby and promote players with college opportunities. The BC tour this past summer went really well, and so we're expanding that and going to Ontario, as well. I am especially excited to take a team to my old stomping grounds in Belfast. Ulster and Leinster academies have been really supportive of what we're trying to do."
This past summer, the EIRA U16s and EIRA U17s both swept British Columbia select teams. In addition, 14 out of the 26 players on the HS All American squad that went to play the British Columbia U18s (and won both games) were EIRA trained along with twelve of the 26 HSAA players that swept Ontario.
The EIRA Academy locations certainly channel players to the EIRA touring teams, but it's not exclusive, The EIRA teams have brought in players from all over the country, and the BC teams had players from more than a dozen states.
Go to http://www.eirarugby.org/ to learn more.
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