After an early start before the winter break, the North Carolina boys High School league gears up for the meat of the season.

North Carolina splits its season, with single-school teams playing in the winter, and then clubs playing in the spring. That's a somewhat simplified way to look at it. The more complex way is that there are several multi-school teams playing now; they are are on a road toward single-school status.

Here's how it shakes out:

Charlotte-Area Single-School League

Myers Park, Ardrey Kell, Providence HS, Charlotte Catholic, and South Meck are all teams that field teams exclusively using players from those high schools. 

Myers Park, led by scrumhalf Tyler Palm and forward-of-all-trades Tye Mendenhall, has started 1-1 after a competitive loss vs Charlotte Catholic. CC, for their part, have enjoyed strong starts from scrumhalf Mick Keough and fullback Vincent Keller and beat Ardrey Kelly in their opener. Ardrey Kell has some dangerous players, including wing Val Razumovskiy. 

South Meck, led by Axel Koppany and Wyatt Elder, started their season with a 35-0 win over Providence, and will look to build on that.

Statewide Leagues

The other league is separated into a Tier 1 and a Tier 2. These are mostly made up of teams that are a majority from one high school, but that have added players from one or two other schools to ensure the numbers are strong. The plan, however, is to have all of these teams (and more) playing as single-school teams in the coming years.

Hough opened up their Tier 1 season 2-0, building on a strong 7s effort. Center Jason Trevino, flyhalf Zach Colson, and hooker Colby Marr lead a veteran group that also includes flankers Curtis Lambert and George Prinsloo, and fullback Colyn Oliver. Newcome Porter Kuebler at scrumhalf is one to watch.

The Olympic Trojans/Providence Day Chargers also looked impressive in their first weeks, beating South Carolina team Wando (which is in the league, as are the Greer 76ers, another team the Trojans beat). The combo team from the South Charlotte area features players from these two high schools plus some players from the area of South Carolina that borders Charlotte. Standouts include hooker Easton Yancey and center Aden Beatty.

Wando should be a competitor here. They are 90% from Wando HS. They won the Tier 2 Carolinas 7s competition.

Clayton opened up with a win over Corinth but then lost to Hough a week later. Asher Cunningham is looking good at flyhalf.

In Tier 2 the Raleigh Capitols started 2-0. This team is mostly Broughton HS, which was pretty strong in its own right a couple of years ago before the COVID shutdowns hurt numbers. They are looking at the Raleigh Rattlesnakes, which is the only true club in the league. But event the Rattlesnakes are looking at splitting into single-school teams at some point.

More Competitions

The Carolina leagues also have teams in girls HS and pre-high school leagues, and we'll look at those more closely in another post.

Up Next

There will likely be some forfeits in this league as COVID's Omicron variant sweeps through. But eventually we will see teams play more consistently.

Here are the games we see on the schedule: