Hey there, Rugger!
👊 Happy Friday.
This week we've got the USA U20s taking on Argentina at the Junior World Championship.
Plus, some MLR commentary and thoughts on a looming Pathways problem.
Packed with rugby. Let’s go 👇
🇺🇸 USA vs Argentina
U20s Junior World Championship
🗓️June 27 | 5 AM EST
📺 Paramount+
🇺🇸 USA vs England
U20s Junior World Championship
🗓️July 2 | 10 AM EST
📺 Paramount+
🇺🇸 USA vs Ireland
U20s Junior World Championship
🗓️July 7 | 5 AM EST
📺 Paramount+
🤙Survey check in:
The results are coming in from last week’s content survey, and a few things surprised us:
More than 60% of you want us to build Player Profiles and Recruiting Tools.
Genuinely surprised by this! Excited to start building these features into Rugby Riot.Almost nobody (<2%) voted for More Photos in our coverage.
Likely just an expected feature—not an indication that you want less photos.Game Recaps are your favorite type of coverage we do.
Not actually surprised by this.62% of you said you want us to keep our coverage Mostly High School instead of expanding into college rugby.
Shocked by this one. We’ll likely add some college coverage this year, but I get the sense that you don’t want Rugby Riot to lose focus—noted 🫡
If you’d still like to complete the survey, we’re keeping it active for a few more days. You can find it here.
Thank you for helping out!
🇺🇸TOMORROW—USA U20s take on Argentina
More on this in our Match of the Week section below.
Don’t miss it: 5AM EST on Paramount+
🏉 BloodFest
The annual BloodFest 7s tourney in Austin featured an incredible 22 high school boys teams.
Honestly, it was tough to tell from the BloodFest website who actually won the whole thing, but several squads stood out:
🏆 Wichita (KS) — won the Cup Final 21-20 over SoCal Tribe.
Assuming this was the top honor. Congrats!
Barbarians (TX) — won the Liberty Final 28-26 over San Antonio
Nebraska HS All Stars — won the White Final 24-21 over SouthWest Rugby Academy
Mud Dogs — won the Freedom Final 22-17 over Spartans
Close scores across the board!
Wichita Barbarians with the trophy at BloodFest
📸 wichitahsbarbariansrugby
🏟️Mount Academy Tourney
Kicking off today, the Aviators, Thunderbirds, NC AllStars, and Atlantis academies face off at Mount St. Mary’s.
Goff has the schedule here for ya.
We'll have results and reactions next week.
💪 CT Dominant
The Whalers — Connecticut’s HS All Star team—put on a show last weekend, shutting out New Jersey and MetNY over the course of a two day multi-period slate of matches.
If my math is correct, the Connecticut boys went a combined 192-0 across age groups U16 and U18. 🤯
Leading the CT squad were captain Julen Gauzo-Badiola (Greenwich) and vice captain Santi Flynn (also Greenwich).
Next up: The CT Whalers take on the New England Junior Jacks this weekend. The Junior Jacks have a strong Massachusetts roster that features several BC High, Milton, and Xaverian Bros players.
Should be a cracker.
💡 MLR bright spots
Major League Rugby just wrapped their 2026 season, with the Chicago Hounds completing an unprecedented 12-0 championship run.
While much of the internet chatter has been around attendance numbers and whether the league will survive the offseason, there were a couple bright spots this season.
Will Hooley — What great addition to the broadcast team. Hooley did the yeoman’s work this MLR season; hosting Sunday Night Rugby, roaming NYC for man-on-the-street social media content, and generally elevating the MLR as the face of the league. Keep him around 🎯
New Champs — Lots of talk last year revolved around the NE FreeJacks and their dominant three-year run (2023-2025 Champs). This year the Chicago Hounds flipped the script and stole the show. A smaller league likely contributed, since the talent pool became more concentrated. But it’s great to see a new franchise in the limelight for the first time since 2022.
The FIFA World Cup—and the attention it’s gobbled up—certainly didn't help, but MLR got through 2026 in respectable fashion.
But summer looms, and word on the street suggests Anthem may be in trouble.
Next year will be the MLR’s 10th season—a commendable achievement—but what the league looks like in 2027 is anybody’s guess.
💥Jack Iscaro | Gonzaga | Class of 2015
This is cool. Iscaro, a 2015 Gonzaga graduate and former Cal stud, has just been called up to the Barbarians for this week’s match against Wales.
Per Gonzaga Sports: “The call-up is considered one of the highest individual honors a professional rugby player can achieve. For an American player, however, this distinction is especially significant as only about a dozen American players have worn the Barbarians jersey.”
Hell yeah, Jack! Hoping you get some solid minutes and rep the Stars and Stripes proudly 👊
Zander Stevens | SoCal Tribe @ BloodFest 7s
📸 bloodfest7s
Summer is upon us, and it’s time to start planning in earnest for next year’s tour. Don’t let time slip by… Reach out to Sky High Sports today and get your team’s tour on the calendar.
Oh, and tell them we sent you 😉
Troubling signs
The USA U19 team is headed to Rugby Americas North again this summer, August 5-7.
But there’s a catch.
According to the April CRAA announcement, eligible players include high school graduates committed to CRAA colleges or universities, or current CRAA collegiate players.
Which raises an obvious question:
What about everyone else?
I’ll say it again—I have no dog in the college rugby governance fight.
CRAA. NCR. Whoever. Sort it out.
But from a player-first perspective, this is troubling.
If an American player is good enough to represent the United States, I don’t particularly care whether he goes to a CRAA school, an NCR school, a club program, or studies abroad.
The jersey should be bigger than the politics.
Consider this example: multiple Charlotte Cardinals players have committed to the University of Kentucky this year. Under the announced eligibility criteria, those players would not appear to be eligible for the U19 team.
That’s right. Players from the 2026 HS Boys National Title-winning team could be boxed out of a USA pathway opportunity because of college affiliation.
Bonkers.
Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation here. I hope there is.
But on face value, limiting a USA age-grade opportunity to one slice of the college rugby landscape is the wrong direction.
The focus should be selecting the best American talent available. Full stop.
Not the best CRAA talent. Not the best NCR talent. The best American talent.
This ongoing college rugby drama feels like a messy divorce where the biggest victims are the kids.
And that’s the part that drives me nuts.
I’m rooting for American rugby to flourish. I believe we can compete with the best in the world. But if pathway opportunities start depending on which side of the college rugby split a player lands on, we are making the road way harder than it needs to be.
Put the best players in the jersey.
Sort the politics out somewhere else.
-Zach, Chief Rioter
USA U20s vs Argentina U20s
Junior World Championship
⌚️ 5:00 AM EST — Saturday June 27
📍 Tbilisi, Georgia
📺 Paramount+
USA Captains: Spencer Huntley (C), Jayden Williams (VC)
These are the moments every young American player dreams about—representing the USA on the international stage.
It's been 13 years since the USA U20s last competed in the Junior World Championship's top division. Tomorrow, they're back.
Facing Argentina right out of the gate is an exciting challenge, and one that captain Spencer Huntley believes this USA squad is prepared for:
“This is a special group, a special coaching staff, and we’ve put a lot of hard work into being the best we can be…and we’re going to show that on the field.”
— Spencer Huntley
Joining Huntley in leadership duties is Jayden Williams as vice captain. Jayden hails from St. Edward (OH) and served as co-captain during a remarkable cultural turnaround there a couple years ago. This squad is in good hands with Huntley and Williams leading the charge.
Special shout-out to the San Diego Mustangs. All three former Mustangs made the starting roster for tomorrow’s game: Spencer Huntley, Tyler Trower, Declan Cadden.
The game is bright and early—5 AM Eastern, 2AM Pacific—so grab a coffee or something and tune in on Paramount+.
“Argentina is a very big physical team and our goal is to match that — and take it a step higher.”
Cheers, lads! 🇺🇸
We’ve got the full roster and additional coverage here:
Oddball musings, thanks to the cold tub.
🏉 Podcasting… it’s harder than I thought. Move an inch from the mic and your voice disappears. Wi-Fi dips a little and the whole thing comes to a halt. Not to mention staring into a camera and trying to act natural. Practice makes perfect though, and I’m putting in the reps! Stay tuned.
🏉 Hear me out: Let’s put GPS trackers on team vans and equipment so I can track where y’all are traveling and playing this summer. June-August is madness.
🏉 Is rugby the only sport where yeeting an opponent's shoe into touch is standard tomfoolery?
That’s a wrap, gang!
Next week we’ll have more dope rugby stuff to share with you; scores, highlights, stories… all the goods.
If you like this, share it with your friends!
Be well, ruck with gusto, and may your compression shorts always stay in place.
-The Rugby Riot Team