The Carolinas winter season culminates this weekend with a series of finals.

Wando, Hough Clash in Key Carolinas Final

Too Close to Call Charlotte Catholic vs South Meck

Wando takes on Hough in what is essentially a statewide final for almost-school-teams. The for-sure school-teams finals is Charlotte Catholic vs South Meck. There's also a Tier 2 final with Raleigh vs Providence/Olympic. So three champions crowned before we're out of February. We're close to a couple of others. Southern California and the SCIRF will find a champion soon, and so will Northern California. The NorCal thing is a school-team final. The NorCal season will go merrily on past March 5, but the school final is March 5, with the NorCal winner taking on the SoCal winner in a state school final.

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We have a bit of a preview of the NorCal final with De La Salle vs Jesuit of Sacramento. Now, Jesuit has started with a three-game tour of SCIRF teams, going 1-2, and then losing to Mother Lode. Head Coach Andrew Acosta recognizes that such results make them perhaps the underdog.

"I understand that De La Salle is pretty strong this year and their numbers are solid," said Acosta. "They took down a tough Mother Lode team that gave us plenty of problems. I am sure that there will be some big hits, but it has been a long time since we have hosted a game on our main field and the boys are excited."

Jesuit has added players as other sports end their seasons so this might be a different Marauders team. DLS Head Coach Derek Holmberg does not believe this will be a walkover.

"We have been a program since 2003 and have only beaten Jesuit's A side once," said Holmberg. "I took over in 2017 and we are 1-1 against Jesuit, so I wouldn't say we've earned the right to be favored.  They are going to be on their home field with a large crowd, so we expect to see the best Jesuit has to offer this Saturday. I have a ton of respect for Andrew and the style of play he is promoting in his program and I know he will have his team ready for us."

There is still lots of rugby to play, and it is interesting to see how the coaches address that. " Hopefully it will be a game for us to build on as we move forward and gauge our progress," said Acosta. 

Holmberg? "This years team has the potential to be really special and I know our school, parents and boys are fired up for a great day of rugby this Saturday."

In SoCal's Open Division Carlsbad plays Crean in a clash of the top two teams. The fixtures got moved around a bit this week because there's a big Weekend-O-Rugby at Army Navy Academy Stadium and they switched around the matchups a little to get more competitive games. This Carlsbad vs Crean game might be a preview of the divisional final, which is set for March 4.

Granite Bay visits Tempe in a crossover game we're very interested in.

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Danville plays a beaten but unbowed East Palo Alto team. Danville beat Lamorinda last week and new Head Coach Kort Schubert has a young team that's building. 

"We're working on core fundamentals—passing, decision making, tackling, rucking," said Schubert who added that he liked what he saw on attack. The Oaks put together a pretty recognizable attack pattern and their kicking and set piece were good.

"Improvement needed in defensive alignment and spacing, identifying and exploiting space in the outside channels in attack," added Schubert, who got good performances from Nico Jimenez, Brock Scanlan, Nate Comsikey, and Greg Leitch. "We're looking forward to building on our Lamo performance against EPA this weekend."

East Palo Alto lost to San Mateo last week thanks to three tries from center Solomone Hokafonu and tries from hooker Kautai Faaumu and lock Rickari Williams. But EPA can bounce back.

We have already discussed Florida. See here: The Rivalries Heat Up in Florida

And teams looking for action outside of their borders are here, too. Woodlands, KC, Aquinas, and Getting Started  A tournament of sorts slated to be hosted at Arkansas State University isn't happening but three of the teams set to go there will meet up in KC. 

Check back for scores.