High School Boys
The Empire Rugby Club made the final of the Green division in Southern California Boys HS Rugby with a 56-20 defeat of Hawaiian Gardens.
Empire beat Rising Eagles, Desert Valley, and Hawaiian Gardens in league play to get to the playoffs, where they hammered Poway, a team that beat them in a non-league game earlier in the year.
Orlando is the Florida Youth Rugby boys HS champions after beating Weston 21-18 Saturday in Palm Beach.
The game was a very tight affair throughout, and a contrast of styles as Weston tried to get the ball out through the backs, using the playmaking ability of scrumhalf Alex Ruiz and Matthew Mairowitz, and some expressive running by fullback Ramiro Fernandez.
We don't normally do this, but we're getting close to NIT seeding time and all of that, so we are producing a sneak preview of the Boys HS Rankings.
It takes us a long time to get all of the results from the 150 or so teams we're trying to track and we didn't want to wait for those wondering about the very top.
So here's what we have in terms of results among top-ten teams:
Los Angeles and Back Bay will play for the Southern California HS club title next week after both teams won nailbiting semifinals on Saturday.
Back Bay (ranked the #7 multi-school team by Goff Rugby Report) defeated #4 single-school team Fallbrook in overtime.
In one of three massive clashes between highly-ranked teams this weekend, #5 Xavier HS came back to beat #7 Greenwich HS 37-36 with a penalty kick at the death.