2022 USA Rugby Club National Championships – May 20-22

This weekend, the top senior club teams in the USA will face off in Atlanta, GA to stake their claim at the 2022 USA Rugby Club National Championships! Read more about how the teams got here and their journey to the Championship.

It was a year of change as teams emerged from the shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a new Super Regional (SR) format from the USA Rugby Club Competitions Committee (USAR CCC) was rolled out. Controversial decisions by this newly formed committee included barring Seattle from advancing to their Division 1 SR, costs for traveling to SRs were astronomical due to rising inflation (out of control of USAR CCC), the same for traveling to Nationals and referee management for SR and Nationals has fallen outside the long established USA Rugby High Performance Referee Pathway. 

Other quizzical decisions by the USA Rugby Club Senior Council include not budgeting to stream the event, breaking tradition from the last few years. Frankly this is an expectation from the members so why wasn’t it budgeted from the start? At the time of publication and 48 hours before the event is set to begin there has not been an announcement that Nationals will be streamed but we are hearing rumors that it may be (we will update if confirmed). UPDATE 5/18: Streaming will be provided by The Rugby Network. 

Regardless, a Championship will happen this year and we applaud all the participants and the eventual winners. We would urge clubs to consider the above and other concerns we’ve heard as we move into another competition cycle this fall. We can be the change we want to see, but we need to get organized and involved. There are lots of well intentioned folks involved, but the execution continues to be poor.