High School Boys
This was a very weird rankings week.
We had well-regarded teams lose by significant margins. We had teams beat highly-ranked teams and lose to lower-ranked teams in a tournament format (OK, that is a commentary on the rankings rather than anything else).
The Maryland Exiles Rugby Festival got back on track this month and like a lot of tournaments is looking to rebuild after some COVID speedbumps.
This year saw North Bay, Loudoun County, Mount St. Joseph's, Frederick, and, of course, the hosts MDX take each other on.
De La Salle, the #2-ranked school team in GRR's rankings, pulled off a nicely-taken win in Northern California this past weekend, handling Mother Lode despite being without a few regular starters.
Injuries have hit De La Salle a bit but Head Coach Derek Holmberg said he was confident with the team he took to paly Mother Lode.
Jesuit New Orleans is into the Rugby Louisiana final after beating St. Paul Saturday, while Brother Martin defeated Bayou Hurricanes to set up a semifinal between Brother Martin and St. Paul.
Jesuit has been in good form all season and defeated St. Paul 34-21 even as they rested some regular starters.
St. Louis University High held an all-Catholic-School tournament this past weekend and the Kansas City area did fairly well, with St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Martin's Kingfishers both winning all of their games.
Since Aquinas and Kingfishers are slated to play each other soon, they didn't play each other in the tournament, so both came out undefeated.