As part of an ongoing tradition, Schuylkill River Rugby participated in two 7s tournaments over Thanksgiving weekend. First up was Apple Pie 7s in Fairmount Park on Black Friday to benefit the Josias A. Sterling Aquatic Education Program. Josias Sterling played rugby for St. Joe’s Prep and Temple University before tragically losing his life at a young age. The Foundation started in his name works to provide swim lessons to underprivileged individuals at the Salvation Army Kroc center. The lessons follow a 12 week plan and so far the Foundation has been able to provide 1500 lessons. This event carries a lot of emotional weight for the Philadelphia rugby community and it is great to see that the benefit it provides has been tremendous. Our top performers from that tournament included Lucas Brickley, Dave Gross, and John Hines Jr.

On Saturday we entered a side in the Men’s Premier Division of New York 7s. Schuylkill River Rugby is regularly the only domestic club side that enters into this division and is one of the only U.S. based club sides in the tournament at all. Our competition features mostly select sides and foreign teams while our side this weekend was a younger team of homegrown players, all of whom are previously established Schuylkill River players.

As explained by Coach Burch “New York 7s always seems to be a tough gritty day. As expected we faced some top level opponents. In pool play we were matched up against the eventual champion (Liberty 9410), tournament runner up, and bowl champion. The physical play left us with a couple of injuries going into knock out play but although we were down to 9 players we bounced back and the day culminated in a win against a good Pacific Islanders team.”

Coach Burch identified Brian Keown, Mitch Vanney, and Louis Baeza as standout players and mentioned that this was the first men’s premier 7s action for Baeza, Jabari Johnson, Kyle Kent, and Sean Barnes. Bringing a young squad to this tournament enabled us to gain some valuable experience which we hope to use in tournaments to come. Here’s the full New York 7s roster:

1. Dan Deal – St. Augustine Prep, St. Joe’s University #THWND
2. Brian Keown – St. Joe’s Prep
3. Jason DeNofa – Kutztown University
4. Pete Mulville – Temple
5. Matt Henderson – Lock Haven
6. Mitch Vannoy – University of Delaware
7. Sean Barnes – St. Joe’s Prep
8. Cody Bukowski – Drexel University
9. John McCurdy – Malvern Prep, University of Delaware
10. Jabari Johnson – Bloomsburg
11. Louis Baeza – Drexel
12. Kyle “Superman” Kent – Drexel