The 2017 Boys High School National Rugby Championship will be held May 18-20 in Kansas City, Mo. at the Swope Soccer Village, organizers announced today. 

The venue will feature four lighted, turf fields that will be set up exclusively for rugby. As has been the case in previous years, the tournament will last three days, with 60-minute games for every team on each day. 

"Kansas City has a great rugby history both at the HS and men's level," said BHSNRC Committee Member Bart Bottorff. "They have participated in this event for as long as I can recall and are deserving of the host selection. We wanted to pick a city that hasn't hosted but has supported past tournaments. Also moving west after being central and east the last four years was important."

Kansas City-area teams St. Thomas Aquinas and Kansas City Junior Blues have been repeat participants in previous Nationals tournaments.

Interested teams will again apply through an application process. That application can be found at this link after January 1, 2017.  Following the application deadline, a committee selects the participants. Still later in the season, the selection committee seeds the teams.

Teams will be placed in either the Single-School, Multi-School (Club), or a Tier II bracket. Organizers say that increasing interest last year has prompted them to explore the option of a second Tier II bracket, if there is enough demand for 2017.

This will be the 5th year the growing event has been managed by a committee after USA Rugby dropped it.