Pelham's Chelsea Waterside Park Tournament

Thanks to Rich Zahradnik for the following:

The growing interest in youth Rugby -- both across the U.S. and locally with the Pelham Rugby Club's own program -- has more children than ever before taking to the field. The Pelham Rugby Club's 2013 Spring Season has its largest team rosters to-date. Because of this, the Elementary School Rugby team was able to field two teams of seven (with alternates) at Sunday's Chelsea Waterside Park Tournament, hosted by PlayRugbyUSA.

The well-orchestrated event has evolved each season, focusing on continually fine-tuning logistics:  queueing up teams, keeping teams playing on single fields throughout the day, etc. All of this translates into more game time for the young players.

It was a beautiful day along Hudson River for Pelham:  weather was terrific, the young players performed well during all of their matches and parents spread out on blankets to meet new folks and reconnect with familiar faces. The Pelham players were up against some old rivals, as well as new teams. All the teams participating in the tournament played well. As a policy, PlayRugbyUSA -- focused on the athleticism and tenets of sportsmanship that the program stands for -- does not tally game scores. That having been said, had score been kept, the two Pelham teams won most of the day's matches across a total of the nine matches that they played.

The Pelham Elementary School team spans Grades 2-5. Within this broad age range are players of differing shapes, sizes and genders, as well as skill set. It was great watching them work together:  spreading out across the field more, forming "Brick wall" lines and learning to look for open team mates so that they could pass to them. Every player participated in every game and, as such, contributed to the teams' wins (which weren't actually wins because we weren't really keeping score, even though we kinda sorta were) of the day. While this is a Flag Tournament -- as all practices and games are for the Elementary School level -- one could see that some players were anxious for the more physical tackle games. The Pelham teams, overall, did not shy away from running into the thick of things on offense, nor avoid chasing down opponents when on defense. With the exception of a wayward foot along a sideline now and then, and the subsequent call by the Ref, there were virtually no errors. This speaks volumes to the players' growing skill sets form their twice weekly practices and, of course, to the efforts of the program's professional coaching staff.