This Friday-Sunday, May 18-20, contains everything for the girls and women’s rugby fan. High schoolers will take over Middle Tennessee State University for three days of the National Invitational Tournament (NIT); 16 college 7s programs will battle toward DI Elite and Open titles in Glendale, Colo.; and senior 15s clubs will fight for back-to-back wins in hopes of representing the East or West in the DI and DII national finals.
RELATED: NIT Schedule & Results • College 7s Schedule: DI Elite and Open • Club 15s Schedule: East and West • Support TRB: Donate Today!
HS NIT
The Rugby Breakdown will be on the ground in Mufreesboro, Tenn., observing 24 teams build to high school club, high school DI and high school DII titles. The high school club competition starts Friday and is a 10-team bracket. Creative scheduling sees teams ranked 7th-10th contest a quarterfinal play-in, and then winners advance to the quarterfinals against top-ranked teams South Bay and United, the reigning champion. This set-up means that Saturday’s schedule, which combines both high school and high school clubs, gets longer since only four of 10 club teams will play two games on Friday.
North Bay, Morris and Danville are also returners, as are West End and KC United. Newcomers include Brunswick, won the Ohio state 7s championship in the fall and gave perennial state champion St. Joseph Academy a good run during 15s league. PA United is a new team in Pennsylvania but features familiar players, including Youth Olympic Games qualifier players Alex DiMarco and Ariana Ramsey, who are heading to Army West Point and Dartmouth, respectively, this fall. Finally, SoCal’s Belmont Shore is making its first appearance at the NIT and is led by former South Bay U18 coach Emo Pula. That squad, too, features familiar names like Kate Buzby and Leilani Mendoza, but it all depends on who’s making the trip.
There are two new teams in the DI high school bracket: Moon Area from the Pittsburgh area and local team Columbia Central, which is located 45 minutes from MTSU. Four teams competed in the Midwest High School Championship – champion Catholic Memorial, runner-up Divine Savior Holy Angels, St. Joseph and Indiana’s Warsaw. Accounting for the east and west of the west coasts: New York’s Orchard Park returns after a third-place finish in its NIT debut last year, and 2017 runner-up Kahuku makes the long trip from Hawaii.
Division II is six teams – the largest it’s been – in two pools, and two teams are newcomers: North Carolina’s South Mecklenburg and Western New York’s City Honors. Pennsylvania’s State College is the longest-attending member, Broken Arrow joined the fray in 2016, and McMinn and Grandville debuted last year.
COLLEGE 7s
The DI Elite bracket brings together arguably the best 7s field the collegiate landscape has seen thus far. Three DI Elite teams – Lindenwood, Life and Penn State – are fresh off of their 15s national championship runs. Lindenwood is the reigning champion in 7s and recently named DI Elite 15s national champion.
Another four are from the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA). Army, Dartmouth and Harvard have spent the whole spring competing in an unofficial NIRA 7s circuit. Central Washington‘s schedule wanted for more fixtures – affected by a head coach search – but is bringing a stellar lineup. Davenport University is holding the torch for Division I programs and has a special trio playing in their farewell tournament together as Panthers.
The Open division, while a difficult national championship title to define, brings equal amount Division I and II teams together. It includes the DI spring champion Chico State and fall runner-up Air Force; two teams from the LoneStar conference – DI Texas A&M won a qualifier and DII Sam Houston won the conference circuit; DI Princeton and its rich history of 7s; DII Bloomsburg, which purposefully played DI tournaments; and first-year DII Queens University of Charlotte, led by Director of Rugby Katie Wurst.
CLUB 15s
The eastern and western regional championships unfold in Obetz, Ohio, and Ft. Worth, Texas, respectively, and serve as the national quarterfinals and semifinals. The teams that go 2-0 on the weekend advance to the national final in Glendale, Colo., in early June.
EASTERN
DIVISION I: There’s a lot of familiarity here due to the Gold Cup. Detroit won the Midwest back in the fall, while Boston won the Atlantic North in early May. The two met in New Jersey for a Gold Cup match in late March and have some recent intel on each other. Raleigh won the Mid-Atlantic, and Philly finished runner-up, thus advancing to a repechage match against Atlantic North #2 Albany for the fourth, South-vacated seed. Philly eked out a 21-19 win at the buzzer, and as the fourth-seeded team will replay #1 eastern seed Raleigh in the quarterfinals.
DIVISION II: Mid-Atlantic champ Harrisburg and Atlantic North champ Providence are the 2017 returners but they avoided each other last year. They contested the majority of their league seasons in the fall and spent the spring winning two CR post-season games to advance. Charlotte returns as the South champion after missing the 2017 show and will play Cincinnati, which won the Midwest back in the fall.
WESTERN
DIVISION I: All four of the DI contenders are returners from last year: Austin, Life West, Tempe and Utah Vipers. Life West and Utah Vipers won their respective quarterfinals last year and then the Gladiatrix won the semifinal handily en route to the national title. This year, they meet in the Round of 8. Both teams are isolated in difference senses: Frontier champion Utah Vipers is logistically isolated, while Pacific North rep Life West plays well above the local NorCal competition. Red River’s Austin, which is over the moon bringing both DI and DII sides to regionals, will face Pacific South’s Tempe. When these teams met in the 2017 consolation game, the Valkyries won 62-12.
DIVISION II: St. Louis and Old Pueblo return from the 2017 regional championship, but they won’t face each other in the quarterfinals like last year. The Lightning, the Pacific South champion, will take on Austin’s DII side, while Frontier champ St. Louis faces Sacramento. The Amazons featured in the 2015 DII national championship and returned after winning the Pacific North over Emerald City.