West Coast Sevens A Launching Pad for More?
West Coast Sevens A Launching Pad for More?
The West Coast 7s series has expanded to three events and the stage is being set for the series to have a farther-reaching influence.
For the organizers, however, that’s not necessarily the end-game. Andy Doukas, Warren Spieker, and Broadcast Lead Jeremy Ognall want to see something major, and national in scope.
"We were at one tournament last year at the Olympic Training Center, which was a very good tournament,” Ognall told GRR. “And I think was the springboard to three this year. I think part of the challenge with how many tournaments that we run is just the rugby calendar."
Most colleges start classes in late August, although a few others are on the quarter system and start later than that.
So, really, you need that month to get going for the tournaments, which limits how many tournaments you have until teams in the West start thinking about their early 15s games.
"I think there's a window to maybe have more tournaments, maybe in parallel, because especially if this becomes foundational to a CRAA national championship, and these are considered qualifiers, then we'd obviously want to have more than just the West Coast 7s."
And that's the crux of the matter. Is CRAA looking to build toward a national-level championship 7s event. And if they are, can they also get some qualifier events going. There are already some conference 7s championships that would work, but they would need some more general qualifiers, too.
Cal Men Premier Winners in West Coast Sevens Opening Leg
A Mirror Of What Was Before
This is a direct competitor to NCR’s CRC, and, oddly, it has flipped the script a little bit. The original CRC was centered around a relatively small number of elite college programs and marketable college names. Now the current CRC is an eight-division tournament catering to all levels.
What Ognall is talking about is probably limited to a three, maybe four-division championship: D1A, D1AA, Women’s Premier, and perhaps women’s club. Over the last two years CRAA has run a Women’s Premier and Women’s Club tournament on their championship weekend and they have been very successful. The level of play in the Premier 7s is very high, and it seems pretty straightforward to fold that into a slightly larger event later in the spring.
“I believe that from a USA Rugby standpoint the intent is to solidify a new Sevens National Championship. They've done a really good job with the women. So the idea is to build on that for the men, maybe combine it with women's again.”
The key is to find people who can execute it.
The West Coast 7s effort is a thing in and of itself,” said Ognall, and it's also a proof of concept for other regions.
“It’s a very professionally organized. There’s momentum behind it. It’s a microcosm of what we can and should be doing in terms of how we organize and run a sevens tournament, the types of teams you want participating, the types of pitches.”
Types of pitches … the commitment through the West Coast 7s is to have every event on grass.
“One of the mandates from the organizers is that they don't want to do anything on turf.,” said Ognall. “I think is better for the athlete experience.”
How It’s Going So Far
The expansion to three tournaments wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a demand. Right now, the West Coast 7s is just that … on the West Coast. But there are plans to take the concept further afield.
“The response has been good,” said Ognall. “We have a lot of the premier programs participating. We have UCLA, we have Grand Canyon, we have, Cal Golden Bears, University of San Diego, Claremont. What's interesting, is a couple of travel teams. Western Washington came to Los Anfeles. Oregon is coming to Stanford. University of Texas El Paso is coming out to the Oceanside Tournament. So credit to those teams and it shows that the reach is definitely getting broader. We're obviously not getting teams maybe aligned with NCR that are already in 15s mode. But I think the number of teams, the quality of teams, and the desire to participate is only growing.”
The Big Plan
The ultimate plan is a major championship tournament of a limited number of divisions but of an elite stature. The model has been worked before—good rugby and also recognizable college sports names.
“You want really good rugby programs but you do also want really good brands,” said Ognall. That approach helps jump-star major improvement in some college programs that participated in the old Collegiate Rugby Championships in Philadelphia.
“If they're invited to an event like that, and they've got plenty of notice that they're going to be an event, and it's going to be on some sort of national TV, then those schools are much more likely to get into recruiting mode and put some support behind the rugby program. Good rugby brands that aren’t necessarily well-known University brans also have a place, so you have to have a balance.”
So this is the beginning of a plan to combine the right kind of competition with the right kind of venues (Dignity Health Sports Park, Stanford University, SoCal Sports Complex) with the right kind of teams, and high-level live coverage.
“We want as many teams playing rugby as we can in this country,” said Ognall. “It's good for developing talent and everything else, but when you're putting on these events you have to have some guardrails on it. The more we can engage with some of these supportive groups, the more we can get them involved to reinstate a [pre-2019 CRC], the better.”
Go to westcoastsevens.com for more.
The next West Coast Sevens is this coming weekend, October 11, at Stanford University.
