GRR: College Men
This coming week we’ll hear more about the goings on in college rugby—where conferences will play and what organization they will join.
Claremont Colleges won the NSCRO national championship twice in the last three seasons, and finished 2nd the other year—to AD-supported Iowa Central CC—but there's more to come.
Certainly favored to win it all again this year before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down, Claremont Colleges is nicely set to show well next year, too.
The Tri-State Conference men's collegiate league has long been a hybrid competition with one segment being part of the National Small College Rugby Organization (NSCRO), and the rest were in Division 2, but now everyone is part of the same organization as the Tri-State D2 men's teams have joined NSCRO.
The development of an Advisory Panel made up of collegiate sports administrators has opened up some significant questions about how top-level college rugby should operate.
The panel, made up of Marti Storti, Rob Dunn, Larry Naifeh, and Charles Anderson, is a diverse group.
Payton Telea Ilalio has been selected as the winner of the 2019-2020 Rudy Scholz Award as the top men's collegiate rugby player in the United States.
Telea Ilalio is the first prop, and in fact the first tight five forward of any kind, to win the award.