NCR Playoff Rugby — National Quarterfinals
💥 Too many livestreams to list them all
📅 This weekend
📺 Watch here

LIT7s Sevens
📍 Bradenton, FL
📅 Saturday, November 29
📥 Info here

🎥Brothers on Three
Info on this rugby film here.

⏱️High School 15s countdown
SoCal — December 13th
North Carolina — December 5th

📊 Fan Rankings are heating up

Last week, we talked about North Carolina’s upcoming high school winter season. Well, South Meck doesn’t give a rat’s ass about our prediction that they may have a down year.

When we first opened the fan rankings, the usual suspects were at the top—St. Ignatius, Herriman, Gonzaga, Xavier and the like.

But South Meck has stormed to the top with a flurry of votes. Charlotte Catholic briefly rallied and grabbed the reins—but no use—South Meck snatched the #1 spot right back.

This doesn’t decide anything—kings are crowned on the pitch—but it does show which fan base is already fired up for the season.

Right now, it feels like we’re hosting a Cold War.

👉Go vote for your team right now.

💥NJ names AllStar sevens squad

New Jersey is often overlooked in the rugby scene, but the Garden State has an impressive amount of high school talent. We’d love to see squads like Christian Brothers Academy (CBA) and St. Augustine test their mettle against some top notch out-of-state competition. Maybe attend the Gonzaga Classic?

Back to the point: New Jersey just released their All State Sevens team, and it looks like this👇

Jordon Young (CBA), Austin Schibell (CBA), Joe Colton (CBA), Jack Frazier (CBA), Ronan O’Grady (CBA), Van Jones (CBA), Alex Pannone (CBA), Luke Eisenhardt (Union), Diego Garcia (Union), Luka Musson (Union), Kiernan Pareja (Union), Jack Olivo (St. Augustine), Eric Crain (St. Augustine), Dom Botto (St. Augustine), Preston Brady (Bergen Catholic), and Benjamin Zambrano (Don Bosco).

Those are some names you’ll want to keep an eye on this spring.

Funny story: While saving highlight clips last season, I accidentally saved a Van Jones (CBA) try-scoring clip to my Apple Music account. So every once in a while—when I’m jamming out to my playlist—I hear the sounds of a glorious rugby moment in my AirPods.

🛫FFA on the move!

Faith Family Academy may not ring a bell for most of you. But the rugby club from Texas is doing something cool: They’re spending the weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina for a string of preseason matches against:

Ardrey Kell—November 21st
Charlotte Catholic—November 22nd
Hough—November 24th

It’s great to see teams expanding beyond their backyard and seeking out competition. It’s also not lost on us that Charlotte is becoming an East Coast hotspot for traveling teams.

Trips like this are a great opportunity to build camaraderie between clubs and raise the bar for rugby across the country. We’re stoked about it.

🌎International

Next summer, the Nations Championship debuts for a Northern Hemisphere vs Southern Hemisphere battle royale.

Maybe this will help solve the raging, age-old debate: Which hemisphere is better at rugby?

🦅 USA Falcons roster

Our USA Falcons 7s crew heading to Auckland December 19-21 for Global Youth Sevens:

We saw many of these guys at Nationals this spring, and then again at West Coast Sevens this fall. It’s a wicked talented roster.

Give ‘em hell, boys! 🇺🇸

We did North Carolina last week. This week, let’s take a look at SoCal.

Teams to watch:

Cathedral Catholic and Torrey Pines headline the SoCal festivities. That’s partly due to their historical success, and partly due to their fierce frenemy relationship. Last year their cross-league match resulted in a 28–28 draw.

Cathedral Catholic returns many starters—especially in the back line—but losing Spencer Huntley is a blow they’ll need to absorb. Still, having guys like Dylan Trower, Reese Reiter, and Kingston Hawkins in your lineup is a good place to be.

Torrey Pines graduated a pile of talent this spring, but they still have workhorses and skill players across the roster. Plus they’re known for being feisty and relentless. They’ll need to replace the beastly James Curtis at scrummy, but they still have his little brother Rees at flyhalf and bruisers like Shay Farkash and the Taich bros leading the pack.

You absolutely cannot count out the next teams on the list: La Costa Canyon and Orange Lutheran gave Cathedral and Torrey a run for their money last season. They’re physically dominant ball carriers and tacklers—you’re going to take a beating when you play them.

Orange Lutheran had Torrey Pines on the ropes for much of their Valentine’s Day battle last season before Torrey clinched it in the final ten minutes.

La Costa Canyon played Cathedral Catholic as close as anyone in the SCIrF final, forcing Cathedral to dig deep into their grit-bag to pull out the victory.

Loyola is another side not to be overlooked. They upset Orange Lutheran in one of the most thrilling games of the season late in February.

And we haven’t even talked about Multi-School teams—where San Clemente looms large.
Another team we’re trying to place is Los Alamitos. They played Cathedral Catholic tough last season—we’re just not 100% sure which division they’ll be in this year.

It’s a stacked region. You already knew that.

That’s a good start for your watchlist.

Why do I do this to myself?

This is a tough one, but based on how the divisions are drawn up, I think we might be looking at a Cathedral Catholic vs Orange Lutheran match for SoCal supremacy.

Fully expecting hate mail for this one—especially from Torrey Pines, last year’s SoCal champs.

We’ll know a lot more by December 20th—because by then, both Cathedral and Torrey will have played Orange Lutheran in cross-divisional games.

If Torrey Pines makes me eat my words, I’ll fly out to SoCal and treat Shay Farkash and da boys to a steak dinner.

🗓️Saturday, Nov 22
⌚️2pm
📍Siena University— Loudonville, NY
🎥 Looking everywhere for a link. If you have one, please send it.
Try checking here in case they add it.

🗓️Sunday, Nov 23
⌚️1pm
📍Virginia Military Institute
🎥 We’re told it will be here 🤷‍♂️

Two D1 big-time clashes. We really hope they both get streamed.

👉Brown comes into this winner-advances battle undefeated and confident. St. Bonaventure has dropped a couple tough results to strong teams, but when they’re locked in, they can hang with anybody.

👉Queens and Wheeling played a thriller back in October. It ended with a 36-36 tie, and unfinished business for both sides.

Oddball musings, thanks to the cold tub.

🏉”If you see em-dashes in someone’s writing, it means they used chatgpt to write it.”
Nonsense. I use em-dashes all the time—and I’m not gonna stop.

🏉 I know of several rugby-players-turned-rappers. I think we need a rugby rap battle at Nationals next year.

🏉History fun fact: In addition to lopping off multiple wives’ heads, Henry VIII is known for being the first recorded person in history to wear cleats.