The New Orleans Collegiate Rugby 7s Tournament is kicking off its first year on this Saturday, February 27th in Gretna, LA at the New Orleans Men’s Rugby Club home field. . This tournament will have rugby teams from Mississippi State, Tulane, Loyola, Spring Hill College, Louisiana Tech, Troy University, University of South Alabama, and University of Southern Mississippi.
I was motivated to create a tournament to spotlight the collegiate rugby in the South. I’ve seen much growth in high school rugby where I’ve coached the last few years, and this year I started coaching Tulane Men’s Rugby Club.
– Matt Austin (Tournament Director)
The tournaments director and creator, Matt Austin, hopes to bring more rugby events to New Orleans and provide more competition for the collegiate level.
“New Orleans is a great city to host any event in, and the New Orleans Men’s Rugby Club has helped us to set up at their pitch for what we hope to be an awesome event that we can continue in years to come. I’m excited that we can include a high school boys 15s match and a women’s collegiate 15s match in the tournament as well to represent the many facets of rugby here,” Austin says.
The Rugby 7s tournament will also feature two 15s matches, a South Independent Rugby Conference Women’s Conference match in Tulane University vs. University of Alabama, and a high school match with the New Orleans Barbarians vs. Archbishop Shaw Eagles.
This tournament will last from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm. The semi-finals and finals will be broadcast live on Gift-Time Rugby Network. Link to the live stream for the Semi-finals and Finals match is below (Game-cast starts at 4:00 pm):
Update to story: Due to so many people wondering why they did not hear more about this tournament earlier, Matt Austin said,
“We are starting small this year to minimize issues, and unfortunately we had to turn away multiple teams after all slots filled up this year, but next year, we aim to build on our successes this year and grow to accommodate collegiate men’s and women’s teams in a multi-day tournament.”
So don’t worry that you didn’t know. Just hope that it is successful and it’ll be back for next year. Cheers!