2024 National 7s Tournament Wrap-Up

This past weekend, the Santa Monica Rugby Club men’s team went to the USA Rugby Nationals 7s tournament for the first time since 2018, traveling to the gorgeous playing fields of the Wisconsin Rugby Complex in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin (outskirts of Madison).

After winning one of the three SoCal qualifier tournaments this summer, and getting enough points to finish second in our league, we were given the one and only wild card seed among the 4 western regions.

The other clubs from the West were perennial qualifiers Belmont Shore (SoCal), Olympic Club (NorCal), Washington Athletic Club (Pacific Northwest) and Denver Barbarians (Mountain).

Coming into it for the first time in a long time, Santa Monica were seeded last out of 16 teams in the tournament, so our first game was against two-time defending national champion NAV; a 7s-only summer select team based out of North Carolina that recruits from all over (and doesn’t play 15s at all). We opened the game by scoring first and held our own for most of the game, but we lost a player to a yellow card, and the two tries NAV scored during that span were insurmountable.

In our 6-game tournament, we unfortunately went 1-5, beating only Olympic Club on Sunday morning, but putting in strong accounts in the other games. The only margin greater than a try was against NAV, who won it all on Sunday beating Belmont Shore 26-12 in the Final, and a strong Detroit Tradesmen side, who placed 5th overall and won the Plate.

(I guess if we finish ranking above our initial seeding, that’s not nothing. But it was small comfort to the boys in green, as Austin, WAC and Life were winnable games.)

Game #1

SMRC 10 – 29 NAV

Game #2

SMRC 17 – 19 Austin

Game #3

SMRC 10 – 35 Detroit

Game #4 (Bowl/Shield Quarterfinal)

SMRC 17 – 21 Washington Athletic Club

Game #5

SMRC 26 – 12 Olympic Club

Game #6 (Shield final)

SMRC 7 – 14 Life

Just looking around at the competition, we were the youngest team there. Only 3 of our 12-man roster had ever been to national 7s before. Half our squad are college guys, or just barely graduated. The three veterans, pictured below, were Seve Woods, Danny Thomas and Joey Krassenstein. All three claim they’re retiring after this weekend. We’ll just see…

There were a few other important guys who played the qualifiers, but were unavailable for the trip to nationals, including most prominently SMRC stalwart Will Taylor, who is also threatening retirement after this season. Will has been a major player for 15s these past seasons, and the energy and passion he brings to the game will be sorely missed. Another big supporter was 7s vet Victor Woo, who was otherwise occupied playing nationals in touch rugby this summer.

Coaching was a shared endeavour. Head coach for 7s was Danny Thomas, who led from the front, but 15s coach Iain Herriott was also committed to trainings and tournaments throughout. An injured Kelson Pupunu ended up running the sidelines in Madison, while Iain was the “eye-in-the-sky” watching the live streaming feed and communicating by earpiece with the on-the-ground staff for subs and tactics.

The results notwithstanding, this was a really strong start to what will be a return to 7s prominence. We had really talented young guys rep’ing from UCLA, USC, Santa Clara, Dartmouth, Utah and more. The pipeline has been turned back on due to supportive coaches like Harry Bennet at UCLA and Riaz Fredericks at USC.

Probably the most important statistic is that we 5 guys in the traveling squad who previously played Santa Monica Youth Rugby for us. Pictured below are again Danny and Seve, plus Dylan James, Christian Hunter and Jack Gibb.

A team shot…

And a HUGE shout out to Amy Fee, who was our trainer for yet another national tournament in a far-off distant place. Amy goes back with us to our mid-2000s teams, and continues to keep our guys safe and sane. (I dare you to ask her about concussion protocol.)

Again, I’ll emphasize that this is a super young team, and this entire trip would not have been possible without the financial support of a long list of Old Boys, friends, family and alumni.

Below is the list of donations we received as of the end of the weekend. Many more supported the Club by purchasing limited edition merchandise, or by directly supporting individual players.

In this list below, I see a lot of Champions who know both what it feels like to win the big games, but also who know that it takes a couple of seasons to get there.

Getting back to nationals finally, and getting a couple of wins against Belmont this summer season really have us looking ahead with heightened enthusiasm for the upcoming 15s season, and taking another shot next summer, as well. The two programs feed and support each other for sure.

Andrew Hunter

Sean Kneafsey

Dominic Riebli

Matthew Strangeway

Mike Fenerin

Kevin McCann

Max Bretos

John Fowler

Doug Bratcher

Montana Hunter

Doug Cassidy

Andrew Stock

Riaz Fredericks

Daniel Beattie

Becky Emerson

Simon Williams

Diane Watanabe

Taylor Manavian

Sean Pypers

Jon Fleming

Melanie McMillian

Richard Lemmens

Russell Goodman

John Pasquariello

James Gibb

Andrew Clark

Zac Winter

John Fordham

Charlie Lydon

Norman Allendorph

John Ruud

Robert Hacker

Gregory Hawes

Miles Cotton

Kilian Kerwin

David Morrison

Simon Jones

Steve Bagnara

Paul Chung

April James

Robert Knox

Paula Nazar

Shawn Lipman

Joshua James Jo Dowdeswel

Nicholas Strenk

Sobhi Sobhi