Tournaments approaching:

🏟️Puriri Memorial Invitational
🗓️Feb 20–21
St. George, UT

🏟️Carolina Ruggerfest
🗓️Feb 28–March 1
Charlotte, NC

🏟️Friendship Cup
🗓️March 28—29
Nashville, TN

Three things that have surprised us:

What’s better than one bone-crunching athlete on your roster? How bout two of them. We’re talking twins. These guys are high performers for their teams — and they come as a set:

Note: If there are more twins out there crushing it, let us know!

This weekend’s noteworthy matchups.

La Costa Canyon (CA) vs St. Augustine (CA) | Sat Feb 14, 5pm PST
📺Watch it here

St. Augustine impressed last week against Torrey Pines. They had the Falcons on the ropes for a long stretch and demonstrated a fire in the belly, despite coming up short against the league leaders.

Falcon’s Head Coach Matty Sandoval said this after that match: “When the scoreboard read Saints 21 Torrey 12, I thought this might be the game we go down. Our group showed some come back, which we haven’t really had to do this year. Proud the boys had it in them. Big ups to the Saints for pushing us that hard, especially without their big man Gavin Lowe, who was out with an injury. They were a tough out.”

LCC hung close with Torrey Pines earlier this season and they defeated Cathedral Catholic last time they hit the turf. This should be a hell of a match pitting two strong SoCal teams against each other.

Kearns (UT) vs Red Mountain Knights (AZ) | Fri Feb 13

We love cross-state matchups. They’re layered with intrigue on a regional and national level. Red Mountain hit our radar a few weeks ago when they defeated Tempe and Brophy. Now they face off against a solid Utah squad in Kearns, which should tell us loads about both sides.

Coach’s quote:

Barbarians (TX) vs Boks (TX) | Sat Feb 14

A club showdown in Texas, these two had solid seasons last year and the Boks made it to the state final. But this year the Barbarians looked very competitive in their 10-0 loss to Woodlands, while the Boks fell to the same opponent 69-7. Early results aren’t always a good indicator, but most appear to like the Barbarians’ chances in this one. The matchup poll in the Rugby Riot Hub shows that 94% believe the Barbarians will take the victory on Saturday.
Let’s see if the Boks can prove the hordes wrong.

“On a sunny North Carolina afternoon at Queens University, Charlotte Catholic finished their remarkable 2026 campaign as North Carolina State Champs.

But the Hough Huskies didn’t make it easy. No sir. They challenged the Cougars for every possession and were in it till the end.” Read more…

Nuggets of wisdom—and some cool clips—from friend of Rugby Riot, Will Hooley.

There’s a sense of urgency among those of us who live in this little rugby media corner of the world.

The question sitting underneath almost every conversation is the same:

How do we get more Americans to care?

Because on paper, rugby should work here. It’s physical. It’s fast. It has highlight hits and electric tries.

And yet… most of the country barely knows it exists. I still hear people confuse it with lacrosse or cricket. Which hurts a little every time I hear it.

I’m not going to pretend there’s a silver bullet. There are too many structural things at play for that. But I had a conversation recently that’s been rattling around in my head.

I spoke with an executive from Overtime — the high school basketball media brand that has built an audience north of 100 million followers. He told me that when they started, they realized kids weren’t consuming sports the way their parents did. They weren’t sitting down for full games. They were following stories in smaller bites on social media.

So Overtime leaned into that. Yes, they captured the dunks and the deep threes. But what really pulled people in wasn’t just the spectacular plays — it was the personality around them. What shoes is he wearing? What’s in his headphones? Who’s in the stands tonight? They made the players feel knowable, and their audience exploded.

Once you know someone, you start to care about what happens to them.

That’s where I start to wrestle with rugby.

Rugby culture leans quiet and workmanlike. Earn your jersey. Don’t be braggadocios. It’s not about you—it’s about the whole team.
There’s something beautiful about that. It’s part of the sport’s DNA. It’s part of why so many of us love it.

Problem is, social media doesn’t naturally reward quiet excellence. It rewards visibility. And sometimes I wonder if we’ve been so committed to humility that we’ve accidentally hidden the very things that would draw people in.

There’s a tension between “we need more visibility” and preserving the ethos of the game.

I mentioned this a while back, but I watched a video where Youtuber Deestroying spent a day with Ardie Savea. The moment that hit me hardest had nothing to do with rugby at all. At the end of the video, Savea and his teammates were sitting in a small apartment sharing kava. One guy was on the guitar and they were all singing.

It wasn’t a highlight clip or a slow-motion montage.

Just a behind-the-scenes of their camaraderie and culture.

And somehow that made me fall in love with Ardie more than any highlight ever could. When he’s out there wrecking people on the pitch now, I don’t just see a world-class 8-man.
I see the guy who was singing with his teammates in that apartment.

That’s powerful.

There’s something in what Overtime built — and in what Deestroying captured — that feels worth paying attention to. Rugby doesn’t need to be flashier or turn its players into influencers.
But we do need to make people care about the person before we ask them to care about the scoreboard.

I wonder: how can we make people care about rugby players—and by extension, rugby itself—the way basketball fans care about theirs?

I’m still grappling with this.

But I have a feeling it’s in the guitar and kava. In the bus rides. In the post game meal.

Maybe that’s where rugby finds its voice.

Zach — Chief Rioter