Kansas City, Here Comes the Cardinals

The Greenwich High School rugby team will be in action over the weekend, competing in Kansas City at the High School Boys Rugby Nationals. Greenwich will start play today as the No. 7 seed and play second-seeded Ignatius at 6:30 p.m.
The Greenwich High School rugby team takes to the field against rvial Fairfield Prep earlier this season. In the contest, it was Big Red that came away with the 39-10 victory.
The Greenwich High School rugby team takes to the field against rvial Fairfield Prep earlier this season. In the contest, it was Big Red that came away with the 39-10 victory.

By Paul Silverfarb

The Greenwich High School boys’ rugby team has come a long way since the start of 2021.

Head coach Mike Fina, who was an assistant under Joe Kelly for six seasons, coached only for 10 days during his first year at the helm in 2020 due to COVID-19, and he was concerned that 2021 might have the same fate.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only did Big Red have a full season, but they will once again be able to showcase their talents on the national stage.

“I love this whole roster because they are selfless,” Fina said. “Guys will play until they are absolutely exhausted, knowing that whoever we put in for them is going to do just as good of a job. There’s very minimal drop off. The kids know they don’t have to stay on the field because they need to lead the team. It’s more like they did their part, so they get out of the way so their teammates can get on the field and get the win.”

And Greenwich’s selflessness, grit, and determination will be tested in a big way in just a few days.

Although Big Red had another standout season, GHS is taking it one step further. Earlier this spring, Fina originally made an appeal to let the Cardinals travel to the Swope Soccer Village in Kansas City for the 2021 High School Boys’ Rugby Nationals, but the appeal was rejected. With restrictions continually easing and more events taking place, a parent on the GHS team sent another appeal to the Superintendent of Schools at Greenwich Public Schools. And as luck would have it, the appeal worked and the Cards were approved to fly to Nationals.

“Giving the timing of everything, we got an approval,” Fina said. “It’s super exciting and we are leaving on June 16. But I won’t lie, it was a little chaotic to put logistics together. Normally we have three months to get everything together for this trip and we have three weeks. It’s been a ton of work from our booster club and parents and players getting stuff to us. I needed paperwork for the tournament and I handed it to them one day and had it back from everybody the next day.”

Greenwich High School is seeded seventh in the single school division of the Boys’ High School Nationals and will take the field against No. 2 seed Ignatius on June 17 at 6:30 p.m.

“Just being able to get back there is great and super exciting,” Fina said. “The interesting thing is that as much as we have been to Nationals as a program, no player on this year’s roster has been there before. I am a little bit nervous because we don’t have the experience of playing on such a big stage, but I think that’s also good. We want to win that first game at Nationals because it truly makes a huge difference how you finish overall. As a program we have historically had a tough time winning that first game. Whether we were in the single school tier or the second tier, didn’t matter. This team has shown a lot of grit and determination. Just getting to Nationals truly is a win for us.”

While Fina and his flock of Cardinals are heading to Kansas City to represent the school at Nationals, the 2021 season didn’t seem so promising at the start of the year. Things were quite up in the air. Big Red didn’t know if there even going to be a season, as rugby is not considered a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference sport.

“Some people look at it as an opportunity to do whatever you want, which isn’t really true,” Fina said. “In fact, this year we had to do extra work on our part. From the CIAC standpoint, it’s easier for them to say that you’re not a CIAC sport and it’s just easier for us to give you a hard no.”

However, with the support of Connecticut high schools and youth rugby, they did some work over the winter to get a return to play action plan in place by outlining some changes to the way rugby is played to mitigate the risks.

“We presented that to the Connecticut Department of Health and then all of the single school athletic directors were presented that as well,” Fina said. “They individually got on board and that’s when we started thinking that this can be done. We wanted to do this for our athletes.”

Fina said that the season started out with a few modifications to the game, such as playing single school in-state teams to limit travel and always wearing a mask. As the spring progressed and the country was improving, restrictions were eased. According to Fina, Gus Lindine, athletic director at GHS, went to bat for GHS and spoke to headmaster Ralph Mayo about trying to get Big Red to battle their rivals from New York, Xavier High School. And before the rugby team could blink, their contest against Xavier was back on the schedule.

Greenwich High School finished their regular season 4-1 overall, beating Ridgefield High 74-10, Fairfield Prep 39-10, Simsbury High 52-12, and rival Xavier High School 28-3. Their only loss of the season came at the hands of Staples High School, a 10-5 defeat.

This year, GHS has two senior captains and both really stepped up in big ways throughout the offseason. Fina said that Dylan Maloney was consistently communicating with the team during the offseason and during the preseason, leading the team both on and off the field.

About a week after Maloney was named captain, Fina was talking to his coaches about one of his forwards, Kacper Grabowski, really stepping up.

“His work rate is off the charts,” Fina said. “That kid never stops. Not only was he the first in fitness and the first in everything we needed to do, he was motivating everybody else and started to beat our backs in the fitness stuff. He makes a tackle during a game and is the first one back up in a defensive line ready to go. He’s been an amazing leader. He’s not a super vocal leader, but he doesn’t need to say anything.

“Dylan is much more of vocal leader and is very selfless,” Fina added. “We had two seniors vying for scrum half and both dealt with some medical issues. Dylan, who was locked in as a center, came up to me and said that he should get some reps at scrum half. He thought the lack of having someone at scrum half was affecting the team, so he tried to win a spot there. He did that and his teammates reacted really well to Dylan doing anything he could to try and help the team.”

Several other athletes have stepped up their game as well. Charley Beney, a big presence this season for GHS, is at No. 8. Luke Ware has been a rock for the team in the centers and has been a defensive monster for Big Red. Liam Kirkpatrick has played fullback, wing, and centers for Greenwich and has been lights out everywhere he’s been on the pitch.

A plethora of other athletes have had the chance to shine for GHS and that’s due to some of the changes made with the rugby program internally.

In the rich history at Greenwich High School, the boys’ rugby program has reached some incredible highs. And they didn’t reach those heights by selecting only the best to play rugby. Since the program began in 1986, everybody that came out for rugby made the team, regardless of skill.

Fina is keeping that tradition going during his tenure with the Cardinals, but has changed the structure of the team. Over the past year, the head coach has added some more volunteer coaches that are invested in the program.

“What I was able to do by doing that is staff our three levels of play,” Fina said. “In the past we had an ‘A’ team and ‘B’ team that was basically our subs for the ‘A’ team. Now we have coaches for each team and that ‘B’ team gets coached up separately. They are getting their own coaches and aren’t the last guys getting reps. And that has helped us immensely.”

As the season grew for Big Red and there was a need to add more players to their Division I roster, Fina has been able to turn to the coaches of their Division II team and ask the coaches there who is ready to step in.

“This is great because it’s helping our kids get the most out of every level,” Fina said. “There are some kids that aren’t get to their full potential during their four years of high school and peak during college. In the past, a senior might just sit on the D-I bench and get a few minutes here and there. That may turn him off from the sport. In having a competitive D-II level where seniors can play a good amount of time, advance, and get better is great. When he goes to college, he’s already going to have a wealth of knowledge that a lot of other guys on the rugby pitch won’t have.”

To find out results from the National tournament, visit www.goffrugbyreport.com

Related Posts
Loading...