Buffalo Rugby Club and South Buffalo Rugby Club both traveled to Richmond, Virginia in the last weekend of April to compete in the 2023 Atlantic Super Regional (ASR) USA Rugby men’s and women’s club rugby playoffs. The 2022 Atlantic Regional was held last April at Knox Farm State Park in East Aurora where Buffalo Rugby captured the men’s Division 2 title.
Both Buffalo Rugby and South Buffalo captured their division crowns in the fall 2022 regular season within the Empire Geographic Union (EGU). The reigning ASR champion and national ‘final four’ competitor Buffalo repeated as the men’s D2 champion to earn a spot back in the Atlantic Regional. Meanwhile, South Buffalo claimed the Empire men’s D4 title to qualify for the regional championship.
The Atlantic Super Regional is one of four senior club regional championships nationwide that serve as qualifiers for the national championships. Division champion teams from the EGU, Capital Rugby Union, New England Rugby Football Union, and Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union now meet in the annual playoffs to crown regional champions and qualify teams for the national ‘final four.’ This year’s tournament was hosted by Capital Rugby Union.
The 2023 ASR brought together twenty-five total men’s and women’s clubs from ten east coast states stretching from Vermont to North Carolina. Twenty-three matches were played from 10am Saturday to 5pm Sunday with seven teams earning regional titles, five of which earned advancement to their respective division’s national championship ‘final four.’
D1, D2, and D3 men’s teams and D1 & D2 women’s teams advanced to the national championships which will be held on June 3-4 in St. Charles, Missouri.
Buffalo Rugby met Boston Irish Wolfhounds on Sat. 4/29 for a national ‘sweet sixteen’ and the first of two guaranteed matches in Richmond. An early 5-5 tie score and hard hitting slugfest ultimately resulted in a 29-17 victory for the Wolfhounds who went on to win the men’s D2 ASR title over Philadelphia-Whitemarsh Rugby.
Mike Dean and Simon Honig each scored one try for Buffalo and Honig added four points on conversion kicks and a three point penalty kick.
In the Sun. 4/30 consolation match, Buffalo met the hometown team, James River Rugby, for bronze in the bracket. A high scoring affair ended with a 45-31 victory in favor of James River, bringing Buffalo’s spring season and 2022-2023 campaign to an end.
Nate Moore led all scorers against James River with two tries and a conversion. Dean, Scott Chown, and Brian Battenfeld each added one try while Max Grundy added four points on two conversion kicks. The team also recognized veteran Matt Schuster after the match for his nearly twenty years of service to the club. Schuster, who joined Buffalo Rugby in 2005, is second all time in matches played in BRC history with 189 while also scoring over 100 career match points.
Buffalo Rugby’s 2023-2024 regular season Empire conference schedule will begin in August 2023.
In the men’s D4 bracket, South Buffalo opened with Happy Valley Barbarians out of State College, Pennsylvania in the first round on Saturday morning. An exciting, back and forth match had South Buffalo in a very late 22-20 deficit with time quickly running out.
Although eighty minutes had officially expired on the game clock, South Buffalo still possessed the ball and with it one final opportunity to score either a try or a penalty kick to win the match in walk off fashion.
Relentless South Buffalo offensive pressure forced Happy Valley to commit costly penalties, for which South Buffalo elected to accept meters which further backed the Barbarians toward their own try line.
Eventually, South Buffalo’s Jayson Endozo found the try zone, taking the ball from nearly ten meters out and carrying defenders into the try zone for the winning the score with time already expired on the clock, making the final South Buffalo 25, Happy Valley 22.
Captain Tyler Hughey added four tries for South Buffalo scoring all twenty of their points before Endozo’s match winner.
In the Sunday finale for regional bragging rights, South Buffalo squared off with Burlington (Vermont) Rugby Club for the men’s D4 title. The well rested team from the Green Mountain State jumped out to an early lead and didn’t slow down, despite the rain, on the way to a 47-0 victory over South Buffalo.
South Buffalo will kick off their 2023-2024 Empire title defense in August.