The 51st Annual All-Iowa Rugby Tournament will be hosted by Iowa Falls on Saturday and Sunday. The tournament will include 18 teams between Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois.
All-Iowa Rugby President Jake Holm on building the event back up to the status of its rich history.
“A few years ago we had only eight teams show up, that was kind of the low point for the tournament. Then I stepped in and took charge of the committee and things like that,” says Holm. “We’ve seen steady growth over the last three years as far as team participation, so we’re steadily on our way to making this tournament go back to kind of what it was before. Decades prior we had 30, 40 plus teams here. We’re kind of looking to try to get it back to that.”
Holm on the standing of this year’s Iowa Falls squad.
“We’re starting to get some youth coming into the team, a lot of younger guys that are gonna be here for years to come. As far as us as a team, we had a pretty good spring this year. We are above .500 for our record, so that’s a steady improvement for us. We’ve been battling to get numbers and to win games. Now we’re starting to see that come full circle for us.”
The tournament is divided into four men’s pools, two with four teams and two with three teams, and one women’s pool with four teams.
Holm on why admission is free and cup chasers to watch this weekend.
“We want everybody to come out here, enjoy some good games and kind of figure out what rugby is. Hopefully we can get some more people interested and more people out here because that’s what we really want. We got a lot of big hitters coming. I would say it’s probably going to be between the teams like Des Moines, Palmer out of the Quad Cities, Metropolis out of Minneapolis and the Alliance team out of Chicago. Those are all probably going to be the guys, that you’re going to get as close as you can get to professional rugby in this area. That’s what you’re gonna see out of those teams.”
The tournament begins with pool play on Saturday at 9:00 a.m. Runner-Up’s and champions will be crowned following final matches on Sunday starting at 9:00 a.m.
