🆕Best of the West Tourney: 7 days (May 16th)
What’s this? It’s a new tournament, hosted in Salt Lake City, Utah, for competitive teams out west. They have a solid bracket set up for the first iteration and big plans for the future. Follow along here for updates.

🏆Nationals Tournament: 13 days (May 22nd)

Quick hits 👊

🏆State Champ Tracker
Here are the teams that have already hoisted a trophy this year:
South Meck (NC), St. Francis (CA), Strake Jesuit (TX), Woodlands (TX), Tempe (AZ), Brother Martin (LA).
Plenty more titles still to be decided—but these squads can start printing the t-shirts.

🔥#1 vs #1
St. Ignatius (OH) and the Charlotte Cardinals will battle this weekend— a matchup between the top-ranked Single School team and Club team respectively. The game will be held at a secret location, accessible only by helicopter.
Just kidding—pretty sure it’s in West Virginia.

👊 Small schools showing out.
La Salette (IL), St. Martin’s (KS), and Gregory the Great Academy (PA) all have fewer than 100 high school students.
Guess what? St. Martin’s plays in the state final tomorrow, GGA’s in the semifinal on Sunday, and La Salette is the favorite in Illinois.
Also: all three won state titles last year. Not bad for the little guys.

The broader rugby picture 🌎

🏟️Pacific Nations comes to USA this year
The schedule just dropped—and U.S. cities are on the map.
Sacramento, Denver, and Salt Lake City will host matches, with Salt Lake City getting the final on September 20, 2025.

What is it?
The Pacific Nations Cup features national teams from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Canada, and the U.S., running from August to September.

Why it matters:
This tournament offers direct qualification to the 2027 Rugby World Cup—so yeah, big deal.
Come on, Eagles!

ICYMI👀

This week 👇

Last week 👇

St. Ignatius (OH) vs Charlotte Cardinals (NC)

Both of these teams have built a very strong game schedule for themselves this season—and have performed exceptionally well. But this one takes the cake. Both are number one in the country in their respective divisions—and they’re both undefeated in full-length matches.

The Cardinals are deep, balanced, and brutal at the breakdown, while Ignatius plays with hair-on-fire speed and dangerous strike power out wide.

Sure, a game like this always stirs the Single School vs. Club debate (which is fun), but what we’re most excited for is high-IQ, fast-paced rugby. And this one should have it in spades.

Trumbull (CT) vs Greenwich (CT)

The Trumbull-dozers take on a red-hot Greenwich squad in a matchup with major implications for the Connecticut rugby scene.

Both teams come in with solid records and recent momentum. They’ve each handled quality opponents—Fairfield Prep and Staples—and now meet with the regular season crown on the line.
Greenwich has found their groove, rolling to three straight dominant wins. Trumbull, meanwhile, is coming off a huge road win over Staples and will be riding high into this one.

Expect a fierce battle—and the rest of Connecticut will be watching.

St. Thomas Aquinas (KS) vs St. Martin’s (KS)

It’s a rematch of last year’s final, when St. Martin’s edged out St. Thomas Aquinas in a back-and-forth battle to claim the state title.

These teams know each other very well. This will be their sixth meeting in the past 12 months. And while both attended Nationals last year, neither is headed to Elkhart this spring—so this becomes the biggest game on their calendar. Expect intensity levels to be cranked even higher than usual.

John Prezzia, St. Martin’s head coach, knows exactly what’s coming:
“It’s always war against Aquinas, and they always play their best game of the year in the state finals. So we’d better come locked and loaded.”

St. Martin’s is coming off one of their best performances of the season—a 31–14 win over Wichita. Aquinas, meanwhile, has quietly stacked three straight wins and is peaking at the right time. They also beat St. Martin’s earlier this season, 12–10.
But… Aquinas also beat them twice last year before St. Martin’s stole the crown in the one that mattered most.

Kansas is in for a treat.

Cavemen (UT) vs LCA (UT)
📺Watch this one.

We previewed this rematch in our last edition, but here’s the deal:

When they met a few weeks ago, it ended in a 5–5 draw—played on a short, narrow field. People on the scene said there was no room to play out wide, leading to a bone-crunching affair.
Think: Hulk and Thor fighting in a phone booth.

But the Utah state final will be played on a broad, spacious field. The rematch is set for tomorrow.

How will all that extra space be used—and which side will exploit it better? That’s what we’re watching for.

Both squads are physically imposing and carry the ball with probing intensity. Any of their ball carriers could break a long one if given just a sliver of daylight. Which means the winner will likely be the team that best bottles up the other’s playmakers, and forces them into close quarters again.

Okapi (FL) vs Key Biscayne (FL)

The Florida state final features a rematch we’ve been waiting for.

Okapi has ruled the roost in Florida for the past few years. Heading into this season, the Wanderers were riding a two-and-a-half-year unbeaten streak, with back-to-back state titles to show for it.
But then in February, Key Biscayne shocked everyone with a 33–26 win.

At the time, Okapi head coach Juan Orfila called the loss a “wake-up call” for his boys—and it looks like he was right. Since that game, Okapi has gone undefeated...AND
They haven’t allowed a single point since March. 👀

Key Biscayne, meanwhile, has run the table in Florida and is out to prove that February’s win was no fluke.

This one’s shaping up to be a must-watch rematch.

Raptor Rugby (TN) vs 901 Rugby (TN)

We saw the Raptors in person at the Gonzaga Classic and liked what we saw. A lot.
They play fast, clean rugby—picking their moments with precision—and we named them one of our standout squads of the tournament.

We haven’t seen 901 live this season, but here’s the deal: these dudes have pedigree. They’ve made the state title match eight years in a row!

The Raptors won the title last year.
Now we find out: can they go back-to-back? Or will 901 reclaim the crown in the rematch?

Mustangs (CA) vs Belmont Shore (CA)

Here’s the bottom line: the Mustangs look stronger than ever—but Belmont Shore has been here before.
Last season, after losing to the Mustangs in the regular season, Belmont flipped the script in the playoffs—and then beat them again at Nationals.

Belmont Shore thrives on physicality. The Mustangs counter with rugged defense and an inspired, playmaker-loaded attack.

The Mustangs only look vulnerable when they try to do too much. A few speculative offloads here and there can lead to handling errors and penalties. But when they settle in, stay patient, and pick their moments—they’re damn near unstoppable.

Belmont Shore brings a grind-you-down style and knows how to close games. Their challenge here will be focus and coverage.
You can’t fall asleep anywhere on the field when you’re facing the Mustangs—no blade of grass is safe with killers like Spencer Huntley, James Curtis, and Shay Farkash on the loose.

This one’s always close—and it could be a preview of what’s to come at Nationals.
SoCal rugby at its finest.

A couple quick hits

🏟️PA Semifinals this weekend
On one side of the bracket: Gregory the Great vs. St. Joe’s Prep
On the other: Doylestown vs. Malvern Prep

Storylines to watch:

• GGA is chasing a three-peat.

• Doylestown is undefeated—and they look scary.

• St. Joe’s doesn’t care about GGA’s trophy dreams. They’d love to blow up the bracket and return to the final.

• Malvern Prep is a wild card. Don’t sleep on them.

🤯Missouri playoffs are…a mess
Earlier this week, league officials told the top two teams they'd be playing in the state final this Saturday. The kids were hyped.

Then today (Friday), the league changed course:

Surprise! No final tomorrow. Instead, it’s now a "play-in" game... to reach the final? 🤷‍♂️

Understandably, both teams are upset—and there’s even talk of a boycott.
We’ll follow up once the dust settles.

💪NorCal Final: Granite Bay vs SFGG
We gave a brief preview of this one in our last edition.
Need to know: Granite Bay won their first meeting by 3 points. SFGG has gone on a three game win streak since then. It’s gonna be a tight one between these two squads.

🎥 Not your typical highlight clip…

This is a moment we captured at a recent Gregory the Great (PA) vs La Salle (PA) match. The GGA boys are known in PA for their wild cheering squad, and the lads did not disappoint with this entrance from the forest on Sunday👇

Think you know rugby? Prove it!

Oddball musings, induced by borderline hypothermia.

🏉 I’d bet 20 bucks that Shipping up to Boston by the Dropkick Murphy’s is the most played rugby pump-up song in the country. Probably followed by some song I’ve never heard—by an artist with a name like Lil FuzzWiz.

🏉 The new Best of the West tournament got us thinking—can we get a similar end-of-the-season tournament launched on the East Coast? Look, not everybody goes to nationals (for a variety of reasons) but there’s no reason we can’t play more rugby and crown more champs. Wanna help with this? Let’s talk.