Competitiveness, quality, and intensity made this year's Boys HS Rugby National Championships one of the best, and maybe even the best, of all time.

What made it so good? Quality of play. The level of athlete and the level of coaching across the board gets better and better. With rugby now helping with college acceptance at a growing number of schools, and at least partial scholarships on offer, more kids are throwing themselves into taking it seriously.

As a result, the teams from the top seeds to the lowest seeds know what they're doing.

As for the event, with three large turf fields available the event went well - despite a technical snafu that prevented FloRugby streaming coverage of one of the fields on the first day. The snafu was addressed as quickly as possible, and everything else started to go well, also.

"I thought it was great," said Penn HS head coach Bart Bottorff, who does much of the heavy lifting in getting the tournament going. "It was very well attended, very competitive, and I think, to be honest, we nailed the seeding. I talked to ten different coaches and they all spoke about how competitive it was."

Look at the scores.

Of the 36 games played, an astounding 16 were decided by a try or less. And another went into overtime. That's basically half the teams hit full time with the losing team able to win or tie with the next possession. Four games were decided by a single point.

Look at the seeds. The #1 seed Gonzaga won in Single-School, and the #1 seed in HS Club, Danville, also won. The seeding in Tier II wasn't quite the same, but the one team people were really unsure of (meaning the seeding committee wanted them in the top tier), the San Diego Mustangs, won it all.

Some other teams and measurements of note:

South Bay

After going 2-1 in Tier II last year with a largely U16 team, South Bay finished 1-2 in HS Cub, but in doing so proved it belonged. The Spartans' 52-21 loss to Danville was 30-21 well into the second half, and only a late surge put the Oaks far ahead. The Spartans then beat United, one of the best teams out of Utah, and then lost to the KC Jr. Blues by a point.

Xavier

This is a young team that will largely be back intact for next year, and should remember that it went 1-2 but lost only 19-13 to Herriman, and 17-14 to Jesuit. 

Penn

After a very difficult 19-17 loss to Herriman, Penn HS won close games over St. Edward and Fishers to take a well-deserved 5th. 

Kansas City Junior Blues

Watching that team warmup against Royal Irish you feared for the Blues' safety as they looked so much smaller than the Indianapolis team. But after weathering a loss to Royal Irish, the Blues bounced back impressively against the Irvine Rhinos, and then edged South Bay for fifth. A reminder that the Blues know what they're about.

The Rankings

In the FloRugby Single-School Rankings, the higher seed won nine out of the 12 games. The three anomalies were St. Edward losing to Xavier and Penn, and Penn beating Fishers. 

In the HS Club bracket, the higher seed won ten out of 12 times. Only United's losses to Granite Bay and South Bay (by a total of three points) sullied that record.

Competitiveness

We already pointed out that about half the games were anyone's game by the end. Look at this also. Only one team in the Single-School and HS Club brackets, the Irvine Rhinos, gave up over 100 points (135). The highest discrepancy (per-game) between points scored and points allowed was 25 (Rhinos, in the negative), Danville (21, in the positive), and Gonzaga (plus 12). No other team averages a winning or losing margin of more than 10 points.