GRR: MLR Academies
The Young Glory academy side took on the North Carolina All-Stars over the weekend.
This was a meeting of U18 players, with Young Glory coached by Ben Cima and the NC All-Stars coached by Michael Markofski (who coaches the Sandill Sharks) in conjunction with program director Trevor Caterson of the Chapel Hill Highlanders.
The Florida Jaguares took home the honors this past weekend at Major League Rugby's first MLR Academies tournament.
Held in Boston, Mass. and hosted by the New England Free Jacks at their stadium, the MLR Academies Tournament featured a round-robin between five teams:
The New England Free Jacks and DC Old Glory MLR teams ran out their academy teams against each other this past weekend.
Both teams are running Girls U19 as well as Boys U19 programs.
The Free Jacks teams (dubbed the Junior Jacks) won both games. The Junior Jacks Girls beat DC 19-7, while the Junior Jacks Boys won 23-17
Definitions of what an academy is and is not in Major League Rugby remain fluid, and few things illustrated that than last week’s doubleheader meeting between academies from Rugby ATL and NOLA Gold.
What’s in a name?
Why should we care about nicknames for teams that don’t even, really, exist?
But that’s one of the premises of this article, that the New England Free Jacks Major League Rugby Team formed an academy system with a bunch of nicknames for each regional group. Instead of Group 1 or Region F, they picked names that had regional significance.