Hey there, Rugger!
👊 Happy Friday.
USA Rugby and CRAA announced a major partnership this week, NAI7s takes over Salt Lake City, and our Player Profiles are finally ready for beta.
Packed with rugby. Let’s go 👇
👥 PLAYER PROFILES — beta
We're opening the beta to more players this week. If you want your own Rugby Riot Player Profile before the public launch, shoot us a DM and I'll send you an invite.
Here's a peek at what players have been building:
Biggest risers in the 2026 Rugby Riot rankings:
These two teams made the biggest climbs throughout the spring season in their respective divisions:
Herriman (UT) | Single School | #27 → #1 (+26 spots)
Thunder Rugby (CA) | Club | #56 → #12 (+44 spots)
Deadline is TODAY — enter now 👆
USA Rugby X CRAA collab
Announced here, the CRAA and USA Rugby are joining forces in a partnership supported by World Rugby. It’s a notable step in preparation for the upcoming world cups and the first real news we’ve heard about the funds coming into the US from World Rugby.
Notably absent was any mention of the youth or high school pathway. Instead, this appears to be primarily a focused effort to strengthen CRAA's visibility and operations.
Jack Clark, head coach at Cal Berkeley, asked the question many people had after reading the announcement: How much funding is actually being committed?
Alex Goff shared in this video that some of the funds World Rugby is sending USA Rugby is an advance on future revenue expected to be generated at the 2031 World Cup. (Yikes).
Just a thought: Unless USA Rugby hires a person whose sole job is to speak directly to high school, college, and club coaches/administrators around the country to get a clear understanding of the boots on the ground perspective, no amount of money will prepare us for 2031 and beyond.
Start making calls, ask questions, and LISTEN. A lot of good would come from that alone.
NAI 7s takes off
Hordes of teams of all ages descend on Salt Lake City this week for the annual NAI7s tourney.
In the U18 Boys divisions, there are plenty of familiar faces: Belmont Shore (CA), TOA Rugby, SacAir (CA), Kahuku (HI), San Mateo (CA), and others.
4G Academy is one we’re keeping an eye on. We’ve done some collabs with 4G Performance on Instagram and we’re stoked to see how their academy team does this weekend. They’ve got plenty of speed, including Aiden McLaughlin — the guy who scored this beauty in the National Club Final:
Aiden McLaughlin, Charlotte Cardinals, dives on his own kick for the try. He’s playing for 4G Academy at NAI7s this week.
📸 Lee Teeter
👉Watch all NAI7s games here on GOLS.
Hosting an event of this magnitude is a colossal undertaking. Hats off to everyone making it happen!
RAN U19s roster
The CRAA U19s roster is locked and loaded for the RAN tournament down in Mexico. There's a pretty broad distribution of talent spanning the country, with a mix of recent high school graduates and current college players.
We’ll keep you updated once the team hits the pitch.
Best of luck down there, guys! Bring home the trophy 💪
Anthem plays its final notes
As many expected, Anthem is done. The World Rugby-backed team will not be part of the 2027 MLR season, leaving the league at an awkward five teams for the upcoming season.
According to the National Maul, opinions inside the league differ. Old Glory co-owner Paul Sheehy said, "We really need to be at six," while MLR co-president Alex Magleby told Will Hooley, "We have a plan for five..." though he added they're planning for six as well.
Many view last year’s offseason as rock bottom for the league—and a chance for a true rebuild. Anthem's closure—while disappointing—may ultimately be part of a necessary reset.
Anthem was supposed to become the North Star for our player pathway. Instead, three seasons ended with a 2–40 record, and now the project has been shelved.
The MLR, at this stage, is focused on surviving and making a compelling product that gets butts in seats and viewers tuned in. That’s a tall task—and one that’s not always aligned with developing home-grown talent.
The MLR needs to find itself before it can fix broad issues like our broken pathway system.
College Camps
College rugby camps have been in full swing across the country, and it's been fun seeing all the photos and videos on social media.
We've spotted familiar faces at West Point's camp, and about 10 San Diego Mustangs attended Cal's camp earlier this summer. We also caught up with Andrew Casteleyn (Gonzaga) after he attended UCLA's camp last week:
“The camp was a fantastic experience. The coaching was top notch and the counselors did a great job connecting with all of us while sharing their experiences on the team and at the school. Throughout the week we worked on numerous skills as well as working in our teams, building up to the final day where we played a very competitive full 80 minutes. The camp also provided a great opportunity to explore the campus and learn more about daily life as a student-athlete at UCLA. It was also awesome to make new friends from all over and compete with them. Overall, it was an excellent camp that allowed me to learn more about rugby, UCLA and the people I got to meet.”
Andrew Casteleyn at the UCLA camp last week.
📸 UCLA Rugby
It’s been a week or so since the U20s returned home from Georgia. It was a mixed bag if you consider the scoreboard alone: 4 losses by large margins, and 1 win over Uruguay — the first U20 win against this level of competition. History made.
But we’ve had a chance to catch up with some of the players, parents, and coaches involved with the trip, and there’s perhaps a little more than meets the eye.
The sickness. Yes, you’ve heard about how the team came down with a stomach illness. And I’m sure you don’t want the graphic details. But it’s impossible to evaluate this U20 team—and their performance—without taking it into account.
Because they got, um, very sick. And it attacked in waves that took out key players repeatedly, often literally during games or on the bus ride to the stadium. There was very little roster continuity from game to game, and that was mainly due to the fact that many of the players were simply trying to survive and stay hydrated.
In fact, we’ve been told that leading up to several of their games at the JWC—notably, versus Ireland and Japan—they weren’t even able to hold anything resembling a training session until right before kickoff.
It was basically, "You’re not puking? Great. Grab a jersey."
Despite this, the lads put up 40 points on England, and thumped Uruguay in the second half to bag our first big U20 victory.
By all accounts, the coaching staff did an exceptional job taking care of the team. Everyone we've spoken to praised how Coach Neets and his staff handled an extraordinarily difficult situation.
There’s something important to take away from this experience. The team had to dig deep and find a type of grit they didn’t know they had. It’s fitting that they ended the trip with a victory, and I think if you look at certain moments throughout the tour, you can see an identity worth building on.
Team-building at UCLA camp
📸 UCLA Rugby
It’s August tomorrow.
Tick, tick, tick.
Reach out to Sky High and start planning next year’s rugby tour.
If you follow Max Brown, you know about this. He’s already bagged one Guinness World Record for his participation in the Longest Game, and now he can claim another record for the longest continuous sevens match.
He and a group of players played a sevens game for 28 hours straight and etched their names in the big book.
By hour 27, the game was mainly trying to stay awake and hold onto the ball.
Here’s a clip from the last hour of play:
Honestly pretty shocked he could still land the goose-step at this stage.
⏮️Nationals Rewind
Joeli Karavaki, Carmichael (CA), crashes through for a try on Nationals Day 2
🤡 Knucklehead Zone
A ridiculous quote I discovered while reading a stupid Bleacher Report article from 2010:
“Professional rugby players are, without a doubt, among the world's best and toughest athletes. But any respectable college football program could step onto that field for the first time and dominate an opposing rugby team. A professional football player like Adrian Peterson would be simply unstoppable. The difference in size, speed, and strength is just that colossal.” — Dmitriy Ioselevich , Bleacher Report 2010
🤦♂️
This was 16 years ago, so perhaps Dmitriy has had time to rethink this buffoonery and change his opinion.
Oddball musings, thanks to the cold tub.
🏉 Hot take: As long as we’re discarding U18 players and filling U20 squads with overseas talent, there is no “pathway”.
🏉 Under-appreciated rugby growth tool: Direct mail. Not kidding. My kids still have the FIFA pre-World Cup mailers from two months ago with all the teams and players on them.
💸 I might start an MLM rescue service. If you think someone's trying to recruit you into one, book a $200 consultation and I'll tell you if it's an MLM. Then I'll recruit three friends to become certified MLM Rescue Consultants and they'll kick $50 up to me every time they save someone. Wait a second...
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
Comments on the U20s