The 2nd Annual Urban Rugby Championship
The 2nd Annual Urban Rugby Championship | Los Angeles
February 23rd, 24th, & 25th
The nation’s only American youth rugby gathering exclusively dedicated to promoting, empowering, celebrating, and supporting organizations serving under-resourced demographics.
Los Angeles, CA | 2/19/23: It was 2015 in Las Vegas when the founders of ICEF Rugby, Stuart Krohn, and Memphis Inner City Rugby (MICR), Shane Young, crossed paths while coaching their student-athletes at the Vegas 7s Tournament. Despite nearly 2,000 miles separating the programs- there was a clear abundance of commonalities in the missions, ethos, services, challenges, and target demographic of both organizations. This brief interaction conceived the relationship and thoughtwork that would eventually unite these programs- and other similar ones- under the Urban Rugby Initiative.
In 2022, MICR hosted the inaugural Urban Rugby Championship (URC) that featured programs from coast to coast. This was the first time in American rugby history that young people of color from under-resourced communities were united and embraced by something exclusively for their benefit. The tournament featured faced-paced 7s rugby with an injection of culture and spirit rarely seen in our sport. It was impossible not to notice the release of repressed energy, trauma, and emotional hardship that our young people needed to release after being disproportionately affected by the isolation of the pandemic for two years prior to the event. This was documented in a short film which can be found here:
The young people built lasting friendships which will become stronger as they meet again in Los Angeles for the 2nd Annual Urban Rugby Championship. Our friends at ATLAS USA have led the way in making this tournament possible for student-athletes who could never otherwise afford to travel and participate. Not only did they fund travel, nutrition, and shirts for the inaugural URC, but they have returned for year 2- helping young people from DC, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Memphis be part of the special tournament once again.
While the URC is vibrant, meaningful, unique, high-impact and managed by effective leadership - it’s existence is hanging in the balance due to limited resources. We sincerely thank ATLAS USA for investing in this work- as well the Todd Clever Foundation, AEG, the US Rugby Foundation, San Diego Legion, US Youth and High School Rugby, and Rugby LA.
As we work together to sustain this impact, we will continue to strengthen the Urban Rugby Initiative so that one day- any educator, rugger, or leader can find guidance, resources, support, program models, and a community with which to engage underserved demographics in the sport of rugby.
We invite all the readers of this letter to join us on February 24th and 25th in Los Angeles to witness the magic of the URCs. In the name of closing the opportunity gap, cultivating upward mobility, and creating a supportive community for marginalized youth - we kick off the 2023 Urban Rugby Championships!
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ICEF Rugby, now in our 21st season, began in 2003 at View Park Middle School, part of the Inner City Education Foundation charter school group located in South Los Angeles. The Mission of ICEF is to prepare our students for college and beyond, and rugby is the perfect game to prepare our students for success after high school.
Since then the girls and rugby teams have been on 15 international tours, including China, Japan, Fiji, Brazil, South African, Tahiti, New Zealand and France, along with 10 tours around the USA, including a visit to the White House in 2010.
The team is now coached by ICEF alumni, and with over 100 4th-8th grade boys and girls playing flag rugby weekly, the future looks bright.
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MICR is on a mission to close the opportunity gap, create a relentlessly supportive community and drive upward mobility in under-resourced communities across Memphis. Cycles of generational poverty and systemic inequity have created enormous gaps in access to basic athletic, academic, and developmental opportunities for young people across the city of Memphis. MICR tackles those gaps head-on, by providing a free, world-class experience that leverages the research-driven benefits of sport to promote skill and social development, alongside a holistic mentoring and programming infrastructure that persists year-over-year for students. We execute on our mission through an intentional program design centered on two core programs 1) K-12 Pathways and 2) Alumni Services.
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DYRC is geared towards bringing communities of underserved and underprivileged youth together by fostering comradery, team work, competition and showing that there is more out there for them. It provides the opportunity to show that rugby is not only an opportunity to play a sport but a tool to be utilized in order to realize their dreams.
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Warren High School Rugby in Downey, CA was established in 2018. Since then we have ran a program where all our high school students are welcome to play. With dedication and hard work those students transform into Rugby athletes. Every year we are fortunate enough to send our seniors off to college with Rugby Scholarships and because we have built such a family like culture, those Warren Alumni come back to volunteer and teach the new athletes. We may not always have the biggest number of athletes but the athletes we do have, have the biggest hearts.
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The Lions Youth Rugby and the Lions for Hope Community Rugby .
Two main reasons for our youth rugby programs are to encourage friendships across a diverse city, and encourage community involvement.
The Lions Youth Rugby is our competitive youth component which is part of the overall Lions Pathway which runs the length of the club.The other component to our youth program will be the Lions Community Rugby. This program is aimed at using rugby as a vehicle for change. We train and play in two communities where 43% of the families live under the poverty line and violence and trauma are an everyday occurrence.
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Washington DC Youth Rugby was formed in 2004 by members of the Washington Rugby Football Club (WRFC). The goal was to expose the sport of rugby to inner-city youth from underserved communities, building the character of each individual through teamwork, work ethic and having fun! This year's HS team represents the first of our new academy program featuring several players who've been playing rugby since the age of 8. Our current youth non-contact teams include children from diverse backgrounds, across the city.
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The FFA Rugby program began in spring 2022 and has expanded to nearly 400 boys and girls between our Waxahachie and Oak Cliff campuses from 1st-12th grades. Rugby is the fastest growing team sport in America and is perfect for kids and adults of all shapes, sizes, and abilities. Rugby incorporates the continuous play of soccer with the physicality of football, and the fitness requirements of wrestling.