USA Rugby South is readying for the Girls’ U18 Territorial 15s Tournament, which occurs Feb. 13-14 in St. Petersburg, Fla. There are 26 players from Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas all representing the Panthers at the select side tournament, which is also an official USA Pathway scouting event.

 

 

Josh Sutcliffe returns as head coach, having joined the USA Rugby South U18s last year in Florida. He brings a wealth of high-level playing and coaching experience to the role, but ultimately he wants to see young, local coaches driving this program.

“The reason I said, ‘Yes,’ to it last year is, one, to bring an outside lens and some different perspectives to developing this program,” said Sutcliffe, who has been working with the Men’s National Team in Chula Vista this week. “It was a long time ago now, but 2007-08 I was in the Women’s Pathway as a coach, and I’ve done coach development in the Women’s Pathway. I coached at Stanford, Glendale and other places along the way. I bring that experience and that’s really valuable, but the thing we’re looking at now is: How do we develop the coaches and the player pathway to make sure that the whole catchment of USA Rugby South becomes a little stronger over the course of time and can produce very consistent opportunities for players as they come through hopefully in the middle school level in the future, but definitely the high school level?”

In December, the South held a player camp at Life University, where coaches connected as well. Head coach Sutcliffe oversaw assistant backs coach Jeffrey Rein and assistant forwards coach Alexis Mild.  He is backed by administrators Richard Boone (Panther Rugby Academy), Trevor Caterson (Highlands Rugby, North Carolina All-Stars) and Theresa Pitts-Singer (Panther Rugby Academy).

“One of the things I do well is try and bring teams together and give them their own little bit of personality every year, but also get them going toward a cohesive vision,” Sutcliffe said. “And that just comes with experience. How do you communicate? What things to do you take out because you don’t have enough time? How do you bend and flex when you arrive there in person?”

The camp itself drew more than 40 players, including some returners from the 2025 territorial squad.

“There were some cool surprises at camp, too,” Sutcliffe said of the group. “Young players coming through. There were some players that hadn’t reached out before because they didn’t know about USA Rugby South. Some were injured or had financial concerns last year. This year we have two players from Memphis Inner City Rugby coming and they’re being supported by their community this year. We weren’t able to do that last year and so I think there’s some fun there for us.”

Overall, though, Sutcliffe would love to build more buy-in across the region for U18 representative rugby in the South.

“U18s is such a weird, sort of displaced thing in South rugby, because it’s everyone from Texas all the way to Florida,” he said. “How do you find out about them? I rely heavily on coach Boone and coach Trevor and other local high school coaches to try and get them excited about wanting to commit to something that is maybe difficult for a freshman to understand. We have this hub in North Carolina, and that’s really strong, and you have small teams in other areas, so bringing them together is sort of a unique thing.”

Most of the scouting is done via coach recommendations and video, although staff was able to see some live rugby at Old North State Invitational as well as an all-star match between Tennessee and North Carolina. Again, the camp at Life was super useful in connecting players.

“It allowed us to start building their camaraderie, to see how players interact with each other, and to also show this idea that USA Rugby South is one coherent group before we get to Florida,” Sutcliffe said. “It gave us a little bit more forethinking.

“They’ve got a little bit of attitude,” the coach said of this group’s personality. “We have some raw talent who are excited and enthusiastic to just go out and play crazy rugby and figure out who they are as rugby players. And then we have the vets who really know their skill sets. So blending those two things together should be a lot of fun.”

Look for veteran leadership in Nakato Myers, who is heading to NCAA DI varsity Dartmouth College in the fall; as well as Texas’ Carys Phillips, who for years has been touring internationally with EIRA. The athletic, hard-carrying Alaina Sandberg and Korie Reese out of North Carolina will set the tone physically.

“And then we’ve got Abbey Pullum, who last year we took [to territorials] and were like, ‘She’s got some mongrel. She likes to run hard at things,'” Sutcliffe said of the North Carolina player. “She ended up starting at hooker for us and played a lot of minutes and really came into herself.”

Among the rising talent, Sutcliffe is excited to see how Charlie Klotter, a winger with super quick feet, performs at the rep rugby level.

“They understand the system. We’re not changing too much about what they did last year,” Sutcliffe said. “And when you play a system that most people understand, what I’m hoping we get to is people creating combinations and really expressing themselves and having that super big smile that comes when you do something well on a rugby field — that pure excitement, things coming off, and the chatter that goes with that post-match.

“And that’s what I’m really looking forward to, because I think this USA Rugby South team is going to have some of those moments where players work together to help the team show out and not just rely on individuality,” he continued. “We’ve got [Tanner] Avery, we’ve got Nakato and Elena and Korie, and we’ve got these players that are super good athletes, but they’re also super good teammates. At camp, you could already see the connections of the teammates coming together and that is exciting.”

USA Rugby South will play all four teams in Florida: first-timer Pacific Northwest, second-year USA West, and long-timers Midwest Thunderbirds and EGRL Eastern States.

“Those with experience are very aware that the Thunderbirds and EGRL are powerhouses, but this year, there’s more, ‘Let’s go find out,’ as opposed to, ‘Oh we have to play them. I hope we play well,'” Sutcliffe said of mental shifts. “Last year, we had [Harvard commit] Mackenzie Marks [from Doylestown] and she had a very different attitude. She ended up being captain and it was really fun to be able to coach her and help her have an influence on the other players. That sort of lifted the baseline expectations of self in some of our returning players, because you could see those veterans want to get the team to start thinking like a team, which we didn’t have in our first session last year. It took a little bit of cultivating and so it’s really cool to see some of those things coming back.”

While winning, per se, isn’t the goal of these regional all-star events, Sutcliffe does want a win. Last year, the Panthers lost a single-digit decision to the USA West, and he wants that to pull out that victory for the players.

“They have a lot of pride in their own states, especially North Carolina and Tennessee. They wear that,” Sutcliffe said of whether there is a regional identity. “But we’ve got kids coming from all the different areas. And that representation is really important to eventually creating that sense of pride, because then you know people who’ve worn the jersey. For me, I think that’s such a big part of that [identity] developing, because that’s that legacy that comes with it.

“And I think that’s what we’re hoping to see – this group from all across the South to come together and play some good group rugby that looks like good team rugby, even though they have limited opportunities together,” he closed.

USA RUGBY SOUTH U18s

Georgia
Nola Brown
Madeline Looney

North Carolina
Tanner Avery
Ivye Bettis
Sara Butler
Lillian Desoto
Adria Doyle
Reva Jain
London Key
Charlie Klotter
Marissa Langdon
Nakato Myers
Abbey Pullum
Korie Reese
Alaina Sandberg
Ena Scott-Benson
Boston Sol
Evie Vinton

South Carolina
Amber Garrett
Lily James

Tennessee
Jamiah Britton
Makayla Bullock
Ellie Eaves
Tabitha Kalapu

Texas
Penny Bodde
Carys Phillips
Luisa Ta’ai
Mariana Ta’ai