The Riot Notepad: NC State Finalists, and rankings movement around the US.

Note: We covered the other NC semi-final match, South Meck vs Hough, right here.

Charlotte Catholic 31 — 14 Marvin Ridge

Go ahead and say it out loud: “Charlotte Catholic is headed to the State Final!!”

We’re running out of ways to say this, but Charlotte Catholic’s season has been remarkable.

You simply don’t see turnaround seasons like this: 0-7 (last season) to 7-0 and a shot at the State Title? Incredible. Phenomenal. Unreal. Call it what you want…

But the fact is, with this latest win, the Charlotte Catholic boys have effectively completed a stunning turnaround.

The semi-final match featured a lot of what we have seen already from Catholic: Plenty of good kicking by Vince Keller, Luke Zehmke raising hell at the 12 position, Miles Caple trampling people, Andrew Kuhn (scrum-half) picking his moments decisively, and excellent defense all around. Although the score might indicate that Catholic ran away with this one, this wasn’t a game that ever had that feeling in real-time. Just see Coach Zehmke’s quote below. Charlotte needed a full team effort to beat Marvin Ridge, and the boys delivered.

Marvin Ridge should be commended for a valiant effort, keeping the game competitive and making Catholic work for every point — especially in the early minutes of the game. They brought the intensity, and…goodness they made some hard tackles. Although their season is over now, Marvin Ridge has plenty of good athletes and great rugby culture. We expect to see them right back in the mix for the title next season.

Here’s what Coach Jason Zehmke had to say about the Semi-Final:

We will definitely be doing a deep-dive on the North Carolina State Final, which happens this Saturday afternoon. So keep a lookout for that.

Rankings update: Charlotte Catholic retained their position at #3 in the country and holds the longest win streak (7 wins!).

Cathedral Catholic 29 — 12 St. Augustine

The Holy Bowl!

The annual meeting between these two prominent Catholic schools did not disappoint.

Cathedral Catholic got off to a slow start in this one, with St. Augustine scoring first and testing the Cathedral boys all game with hard running and hits. After a highly emotional game against Torrey Pines last week, it’s not surprising that the Dons began a little flat in this game. A variety of miscues early in the game — knock-ons, missed tackles — kept Cathedral from getting into a rhythm.

But as the game wore on, Cathedral Catholic found their groove. Spencer Huntley did the yeoman’s work from the scrum-half position with a number of clever kicks, crucial tackles, and typically deft work distributing the ball. Dylan Trower got rolling, spreading the ball to his back line beautifully. And once the Dons pulled themselves into form they could not be stopped. We’ve mentioned it before, but these boys are incredibly dangerous with the ball in-hand. They hit gaps or draw defenders as the moment requires, and their offloads are generally pin-point. Once they cleaned up their defense it was a recipe for victory.

The final 20 minutes of the game belonged to Cathedral, who were humming at this point.

St. Augustine is a very good team, and while this one didn’t go their way, nobody should take them lightly (not that anybody was). They were tackle-breaking machines in the first half, and they laid down some gnarly hits on defense as well. Cathedral Catholic scores a lot of points, but the Saints held them to 29 points — just one point more than Torrey Pines the previous week. Definitely a team to keep an eye on. 👀

Rankings Update: Cathedral Catholic retained their position at #1. This is in large part due to the massive points they put up earlier in the season. But Orange Lutheran is nipping at their heels along with Torrey Pines (who has played one less game)

Torrey Pines 24 — 21 La Costa Canyon

Similar to the Cathedral Catholic boys, Torrey Pines were a little banged up after the big game last week. Down several key players — 8-man Will Barrett, Scrum-half James Curtis, and Fly-half Rees Curtis — Torrey Pines had to dig deep against a stout LCC team that came thiiis close to an upset.

We didn’t see any game film for this one, but we were told that Sam Violet played very well at 10 this week for Torrey Pines, and Will Schreck (prop) was a monster.

La Costa Canyon has had a brutal three-week stretch (Cathedral Catholic, St. Augustine, Torrey Pines) and the schedule shows another date with Cathedral coming up on February 15th. As they say…iron sharpens iron! And if this most recent game is any indicator, LCC is getting sharper each week. Opponents beware.

Rankings Update: We get it—Torrey Pines hasn’t lost, and they just tied Cathedral last week. So why the drop? Simple: rankings are based on points scored, points allowed, and strength of schedule. La Costa Canyon came into this game ranked in the 30s, so a narrow win doesn’t give Torrey much of a boost. Meanwhile, Orange Lutheran is undefeated and on the rise. But all of this could change fast—Torrey Pines and Orange Lutheran face off this weekend, and that game will have serious rankings implications.

Key Biscayne 33 — 26 Okapi

Okapi was blowing up scoreboards across the gulf coast before they ran into Key Biscayne. We know Okapi are a strong, athletic team, and they were seemingly scoring at will. But Key Biscayne handed them their first loss in this Florida showdown — which raises the question: How good is Key Biscayne this year?

We noticed that the Goff Report had Key Biscayne ranked 27th for Club at the beginning of the season, while Okapi sits at 6th.

Hmm, color me intrigued.

We’ll do some digging, get some game film, and report back to you on both of these Florida teams.

Rankings Update: This game saw Key Biscayne rise 5 spots in our rankings, while Okapi dropped 9 places. This is partly due to the loss, and partly due to other teams performing well.

Rancho Cucamonga 7 — 80 Orange Lutheran

Orange Lutheran keeps rolling with this win — a battle of previously-unbeaten teams.

171 - 21 👀

That’s the combined scores of Orange Lutheran’s last 3 games, all wins. When we talked to another SoCal coach recently, he said, “We are very curious to see how Orange Lutheran is this year. They’re kind of a dark horse.”

That quote was two weeks ago. Safe to say: Orange Lutheran is for real. They’re 3-0. They just cracked the top 3 in our rankings. And now they’ve got a date with Torrey Pines this weekend—time to see where they really stack up in SoCal.

Rancho Cucamonga came into this game 3-0, but they hadn’t played one of the top tier teams yet (although a close win over a strong John Muir team was a significant result). They have a game with Coronado this week (Feb 15th), before clashing with a formidable San Clemente squad the next week (Feb 21st).

Rankings Update: Orange Lutheran jumped two places to sit at #2 in the rankings this week. That’s mainly due to their perfect 3-0 record and their ability to keep opponents off the scoreboard. HOWEVER…it’s only 3 games. The rankings reward consistency — so we’ll circle back and see how they fare over the next few weeks. This weekend is their biggest challenge yet: Torrey Pines.

Alright, that’s it for this week’s Riot Notepad. Next week, we’ll have more quick-hit notes on games from around the country.

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Cheers!

-The Rugby Riot Team