GRR: Awards
Most of us now know Brian Vizard as the head of the US Rugby Football Foundation, and as a TV announcer and analyst, but before all of that, Viz was the captain of the USA team.
In a time when the best of thw West Coast often came from California exclusively, Jeff Lombard was an outlier.
A big, powerful flanker from Western Washington University, the lifetime Northwesterner cut his teeth in the always imposing British Columbia league, and forced his way onto the USA national team at a time when playing in Washington and BC was a quick road to obscurity.
Kirk Khasigian had the unenviable task of replacing one of the USA's all-time greats, as he pulled on into the Eagle #2 jersey after the retirement of Tom Billups.
A smooth and intelligent flyhalf out of Penn, Ines Rodriguez was one of those players who just glued everything together.
A superb playmaker in 15s for Penn and later for top-level clubs in Pennsylvania, Rodriguez was capped eight times by the USA.
Jay Hanson’s story is a classic one of the early days of the modern era of American rugby.
He found rugby where he could, and continued to perform at a high level whenever he did so. He played in high school in Maryland when that wasn’t really a thing. He attended TCU and found a club in Fort Worth to play for.