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Speculative Season: Who Might Have Won HS Club Nationals

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Speculative Season: Who Might Have Won HS Club Nationals

Dan Bandoni photo.

As we did with the single-school national championship, at GRR we're looking at how the HS Nationals might have panned out.

This is, of course, pur speculation. Most teams have barely started their club season, and so we're using everything we can from preseason games, and other indicators.

There are the HS Clubs we know for sure were attending Nationals. One more team, probably from Northern California, was slated to fill a spot.

For-sure Top-Tier teams:

Charlotte Tigers. Blew through the Carolina Ruggerfest and was ranked #1 when the COVID-19 outbreak shut down rugby.

Back Bay. Just getting started, but the feeder programs in Southern California were solid and with the Sharks being the defending champs, they'd have to be in there. 

The Woodlands. Excellent string of results and that bumped them, at one point, to #1. A loss to Germantown dropped them, but that was a loss in which they were missing three leading players. Those players would have been available for Nationals.

Probable Top-Tier teams:

Royal Irish. A program that has been at the forefront of high school rugby for years. A coaching change and the loss of some key seniors from last year might give us pause on this program. A 28-26 win over St. Edward started their season, which is enough to figure the Irish should be strong again. 

Fort Hunt. A win over Gregory the Great and Berks, and a close-ish loss to Xavier is probably good enough. 

Danville. National Champs in 2018, the Oaks started well with wins over Menlo-Atherton, Elsie Allen, and Lamorinda. Those are all good teams, but aren't ranked highly enough to make anyone say with confidence that Danville is a national title contender. So they could be.

Aspetuck. Shutout wins over Berks County and West End are probably enough.

Who Goes To Tier II?

This is a testament to how good the HS Nationals field has become that we're looking at state champions and previous top-four finishers and seeing them in Tier II. KC Jr. Blues is one of those teams, while the Eastside Lions were Tier II runners-up in 2019, and are a tough to to keep there.

There would probably be a three-team battle among San Diego, United, and Raleigh for that final spot in the top tier. We're leaning United at the moment. 

And it's quite possible that Genesis might end up joining this list in Tier II.

Opening Round:

#1 Charlotte vs #8 Danville

#4 Royal Irish vs #5 Fort Hunt

 

#2 Back Bay vs #7 Aspetuck

#3 Woodlands vs #6 United

We're confident about the top four, but the next four could be mixed around. What is clear is there is no gimme game for the supposed higher seed, and it is completely possible we could see all of the lower seeds advance. 

Also of note, these are eight teams from seven different states, and the two Californian teams are from Southern and Northern California—two separate organizations.

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Semis

Charlotte vs Royal Irish

Back Bay vs ...

We're not sure about Woodlands and United. No knock on Woodlands, but early indications are that United could have been very good this year. In addition, there's something to be said about institutional experience, and United has been successful at nationals for a long time. Even when they are a little down, they perform well. 

The Final

This is tough. Picking who would make this final is not easy, and we kind of think this could be a changing of the guard with Charlotte against Woodlands—how great would that be? But we could also see Royal Irish vs United, which would be two teams that are always circling around that final game.

We're not going to pick one. Maybe in the end the TIgers ride their skill, atheticism, and experience to the top the way Back Bay did last year or Granite Bay did in 2017. Maybe ...