St. Thomas Aquinas is following up their trip to the Lindenwood HS tournament with a two-game visit to two of the stronger teams in Colorado.

Aquinas faces Regis Jesuit on Saturday, followed by East HS on Sunday.

“We have a good relationship with Aquinas,” said East HS Head Coach Bill Baer. “We visited them last year, and it’s important to play outside of your region.”

East started their season with a 19-15 win over Regis Jesuit last week. Regis was missing a couple of players, and Head Coach and current national team player Zach Fenoglio, a Regis alumnus, said he is pleased with the depth of his program.

“We’ve about doubled our roster,” he said. “We’ve got some good athletes and the guys are really excited about playing a team outside of our state.”

Regis flankers Logan and Donovan Ronan, twin brothers, have been playing well and have strong motors to get them around the field. Flyhalf Ryan Maxfield is a junior who was a captain as a sophomore last year. He is an experienced talent who links well with Lou Vera, who transferred to Regis from the Philippines, where he had played for several years.

Former No. 8 Austin Lionette is a co-captain and was moved to outside center. He partners in the midfield with Drew Schelgel - both players were linebackers on the Regis football team.

It’s a tough opposition for Aquinas, who beat Brother Rice at the Lindenwood tournament before losing to eventual winners Penn.

“I though it was a very productive weekend,” said STA Head Coach Tim Kluempers. “We were able to play high level organized teams and learned that we must do the little things correctly to be successful. Coaches talk all the time about what it takes to compete at that level and the players don't always listen. Now they got to experience it and after watching film we will work to fix those issues.”

Kluempers said the changes are drastic - just working on spreading on defense and finding space on offense.

“We need work on our lineouts and hopefully they improved a little this week,” he added. “That is something that takes time and we were not bad on our first weekend I would just like to win more of our ball and disrupt more of the opposition ball.”

The big thing for Aquinas was that the new players got to play some rugby and figure out what the game is like.

“It was a good start to the season, and now we are headed to Denver to play two good teams and it will be a great test of where we are,” added Kluempers. “The only bummer is we were not able to get outside this week we had to try and make our improvements in a school gym. I wish we had one day out to work on a full pitch but you have to play the cards you are dealt.”