Fallbrook hosts Girls Green Division High School Sevens rugby tournament

The Fallbrook High School stadium was the site of the Girls Green Division High School Sevens rugby tournament Jan. 2.

"It went off very well," said Fallbrook co-coach Craig Pinnell.

The tournament was the first of five Saturday tournaments in January. Those tournaments will be played at different schools, although Fallbrook High School will also be the site of the Jan. 30 competition.

"The idea is that each venue will have a minimum of four teams every weekend," Pinnell said. "The goal is experience definitely, and the idea is to try to play as many games as possible between now and the end of the month."

While providing experience to as many high school rugby players as possible is one goal of the tournaments, the involvement of multiple San Diego County schools both as participants and as hosts is intended to promote rugby including efforts to make boys rugby and girls rugby CIF sports. Boys rugby currently has a high school league which coincides with winter CIF sports as well as under-18 club play which begins in March. In past years, the girls rugby season has begun with club play in March.

The Jan. 2 tournament included four novice division teams and four intermediate division teams, although Pinnell noted that the intermediate division was the equivalent of the high school varsity club and the novice division was the equivalent of junior varsity play at the high school level. The tournaments, which will not have official championships, will be restricted to San Diego County teams and will utilize high school players only.

The intermediate division Jan. 2 consisted of two Fallbrook High School teams and one Mira Mesa High School squad; each team played a total of four games consisting of two games against each other team. The four teams in the novice division consisted of two from La Costa Canyon High School and one apiece from Fallbrook and Mira Mesa; each of those four teams played every other team once. The games consisted of seven-minute halves with a one-minute halftime break.

Craig Pinnell, Marin Pinnell, Paul Bell, and John Duncan are Fallbrook's four coaches this year. "We all coached everybody," Craig Pinnell said.

Fallbrook had a total of 21 players and thus used seven on the Fallbrook 1 intermediate team, seven on the Fallbrook 2 intermediate team, and seven on the novice team. "We didn't have any subs," Pinnell said.

That meant that all 21 Fallbrook players were on the field for the entirety of every game, which gave those players that game experience. "That's the idea," Pinnell said. "That's why we created so many teams."

The tournament took place at the end of the school's winter break, and Pinnell expects approximately 10 additional players for the subsequent tournaments although Fallbrook will utilize substitutes rather than create additional teams. The players who were not available Jan. 2 included Fallbrook High School seniors Michel Navarro and Kayla Canett, who were in Florida for a USA Rugby national camp.

That camp was restricted to players 17 and older, so Fallbrook junior Lilly Durbin participated in the tournament games instead. Durbin scored 13 tries and kicked 13 conversions. "She definitely dominated the day," Pinnell said.

Durbin was on the Fallbrook 1 intermediate division team which won all four matches. She had five tries and six conversion kicks in the 42-0 victory over Mira Mesa, accounted for all of the Fallbrook 1 points in the 28-5 triumph over the Fallbrook 2 team with four tries and four conversions, scored two tries and two conversions in the 29-5 win over Mira Mesa, and contributed two tries and one conversion in the 22-12 game with Fallbrook 2.

The Fallbrook 2 team split its matches against Mira Mesa for a 1-3 record in the tournament.

The Fallbrook novice team lost to Mira Mesa but defeated both La Costa Canyon teams. "The ultimate goal for them was to understand the structure of the game and what it takes to play that many games in one day," Pinnell said.