The Woodlands HS team traveled from Houston to the Kansas City area to play the Kansas City Jr. Blues and St. Thomas Aquinas.

This event was held in place of a canceled high school gathering at Arkansas State University. Then the games were slated to be held at Swope Soccer Village, but a snowstorm closed those fields. The St. Thomas Aquinas school stepped in at the last minute, cleared off the snow, and hosted both games.

"Well, heck," said Aquinas Head Coach Tim Kluempers. "They drove all the way out here, the least we could do was get them a field."

They also fed the teams on Saturday. 

On Saturday the game was almost all Woodlands. The Texas team ran out to a 43-7 lead at halftime and cruised 76-19. Kansas City chose Woodlands No. 8 Ethan Scott as the best forward of the match and flyhalf Cole Scharffenorth as the best back.

Scott, Scharffenorth, and flanker Jack Johnson all scored two tries for Woodlands, with hooker Rodrigo Martinez, prop Zach Raper, lock Skylawn Feletoa, scrumhalf Benjamin Urbanovsky, wing Lucas Staggs, and lock Jacob Harris all touching down once. Scharffenorth added eight conversions for a personal haul of 26. 

For KC it was a useful meeting but they are still waiting for some winter sports to finish up and so were not deep. They started seven sophomores, and got a nice effort from 10th-grader Lance Nauer, who is just returning to the team after the end of baskebtall season. 

"We were just outclassed with maturity, experience, organization and physicality," said KC Head Coach Casey Cummings.

In the Sunday game, Aquinas, in their first game of the year, gave Woodlands a tough going. The game was 12-5 at halftime and 26-10 at full time in favor of The Woodlands. Woodlands were led by locks Steele Herndon and Feletoa. For Aquinas, center Brock Kluempers was the backs player of the game and hooker Braden Martinez was the best forward. Payton Ptasnik in the backs, prop Aaron Goodwin, center Bennett Bodenhamer, and fullback Gabe Meier had solid showings for STA.

"I was really pleased with the attitude and effort," said Kluempers. "We've got to work on our tactics, but we blooded four players and played some damn good rugby. Woodlands are a very good side and we're glad they came, and we learned a lot. But what you can't teach is playing your butt off the the very end and the guys did that."

Also on Sunday, St. Martins Kingfishers played a shorthanded KC Jr. Blues team (that needed to borrow some players from Olathe/Blue Valley). Kingfishers looked very good and led 40-0 at halftime, ending up winning 47-5 after KC fixed some issues in their defense.

"It is still early, early early days for us as once we add the remainder of our returning pieces from wrestling and basketball and some still recovering from injuries, as well as the new recruits that always trickle in as the weather gets warmer, we will be a completely different team in a month's time," said Cummings. "But this weekend was extremely valuable game experience for our young and new players and great experience for the guest players to get minutes of rugby under their belt against good competition that they otherwise would not have seen."