North Bay All-American Sam Tancredi will represent Maryland. /// Photo: Jackie Finlan
Five Regional Cup Tournaments (RCTs) will occur over the next two weekends, and they range in popularity for the girls’ divisions. In terms of good attendance, the Great Northwest Challenge (Oregon) and Rocky Mountain Challenge (Colorado) lead the way. In contrast, there is no girls’ division at the South RCT. And then there are all-star tournaments outside of the RCT circuit that cater to states that need more flexibility if they’re to field a competitive select side at all.
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Concurrent with this weekend’s West and Northeast RCTs, Mount St. Mary’s is hosting Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland in an all-star round robin. The following weekend, players from Virginia, Illinois, Tennessee and South Carolina will compete in a non-RCT event in Rock Hill, N.C. The majority of the aforementioned states have difficulty complying with the JV (9th and 10th graders) and varsity (11th and 12 graders) RCT eligibility rules, which divide teams by age not ability or experience. So, the states are creating regional fixtures where players can play while in-state numbers continue to grow.
“Even if we had 48 players show up, that wouldn’t give us strong varsity and JV teams,” said Valerie Connolly, who relinquished her head coaching role with the U19 Maryland Exiles to focus on girls’ high school development and high performance within Rugby Maryland. “We’re not talking about every girl starting freshmen year. Some freshmen and sophomores have had the opportunity to play for three years, and then we have juniors and seniors in their first season. So even with the right numbers, we’d still be forcing girls with one season or who aren’t that good of an athlete onto the varsity side.”
For Connolly, revamping the state’s select side is a big initiative, and obviously having the right playing opportunities is part of that. The Maryland Girls’ Rugby Academy, established by Connolly in 2015, introduces the sport to newcomers and is developing its high performance track that will lead to next-level opportunities like the state all-star team. If Maryland only had an RCT toward which to aspire, with no midway steps, then that upward pull could be threatened.
That pull has to come from all directions, and Connolly is glad to be working within the Mid-Atlantic Rugby Foundation (MARFI), which is dedicated to growing rugby in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. MARFI awarded a grant to the Mount St. Mary’s tournament and funded the hiring of professional videographers and athletic trainers.
Connolly realizes there are many areas of concern to address – to filling the gap between youth and high school rugby with substantial middle school competition; to reconsidering the competitive 15s structure and evaluate expanding across state lines; to partnering with Montgomery County for better exposure and facilities. As Connolly and like-minded advocates try to move their states’ girls’ rugby in the right direction, they need flexibility and support to keep players playing and hungry for more.
For Pennsylvania, opting out of the RCT circuit had nothing to do with numbers, unlike the majority of the aforementioned states. Pennsylvania fields two 15s divisions for girls’ high schools and can easily field JV and varsity all-star teams.
“We are not attending the RCT this year because of the past conflicts we’ve had with USA Rugby and their eligibility rules,” one Pennsylvania all-star coach explained. “Some teams were able to play 9th and 10th graders on their teams last year and other teams were not allowed, and you could never get a straight answer out of the RCT organizers about why that was the case.
“Furthermore, in the past we’ve won the RCT tournament and we’ve rarely had anyone selected for the Stars and Stripes teams,” the coach referenced the former summer assemblies that produced Girls’ High School All-Americans (GHSAAs). “Two years ago, we were the tournament champions and we had to fight tooth and nail to get the tournament MVP into the Stars and Stripes camp. So, we decided to go straight to the source.”
Mount St. Mary’s is the new home of GHSAA head coach Farrah Douglas, who will serve as the Emmitsburg, Md., women’s team head coach in the fall.
Stay tuned for event coverage.