GRR: North Carolina
MARIETTA, Ga. - As an anchor university for rugby in the SouthEast, it was only a matter of time before Life U put itself in the mix as a big stop on the Summer U19 7s calendar. This past Saturday the university hosted its inaugural U19 7s tournament which was well attended by regional select teams. The five teams vying for the first Life U 7s HS Cup were:
Quietly, for the last five plus year, middle school rugby has been blooming in pockets throughout the South. Around Atlanta, Charlotte, the Raleigh/ Durham area, Richmond and other Virginia cities, and across Tennessee there are middle school rugby football clubs that all have multiple seasons under their belts. The explosive growth at the under high school level is not flying under the radar
Sometimes creativity is called for when getting grassroots rugby off of the ground, and that’s exactly what Erik Saxon employed when looking to build girls high school rugby in North Carolina.
Charlotte Catholic won the North Carolina single-school boys HS rugby championship this weekend with an emphatic 55-17 defeat of rivals North Meck.
Led by the play of wing Jonah Lamothe, who scored two tries and played solid defense, and with hooker Matthew Notorangelo having a big day running with the ball and on defense, Charlotte Catholic ran away with the championship.
The North Mecklenburg HS rugby team, which is slated to play in the North Carolina single-school state final this Saturday, was hit with a tragedy Tuesday when 17-year-old junior Marcos Hernandez reportedly drowned in a local lake.
The full story on this terrible event is here.