GRR: National Teams
Skip Niebauer was one of the top American rugby players even before there was a national team to play for.
A central part of an excellent UCLA team in the early 1970s he was also part of the all University of California system team that toured Australia and New Zealand.
Kort Schubert earned his first cap at the age of 20, and was one of the many players to go from Jesuit in Sacramento to Cal to the Eagles.
He was a talent and wide-ranging openside flanker for the USA and was capped 49 times over a nine-year career.
Jillion Potter's rugby rise was metioric and the end of her career far too abrupt, but in the middle of it she was as good as they come.
Is he the most intense rugby player the USA ever produced? There have been a lot of intense men and women, but it's hard to imagine anyone outworking Tom Billups.
Rudy Scholz had such an impact on the game that his name adorns the award for the top men's college player in the US.
A graduate of Santa Clara University, where he played rugby, Scholz was a decorate veteran of World War I, and then returned to Belgium and France as part pf the USA Olympic rugby team in 1920 and 1924.