Delaney Whittet
Sports Editor
With California Interscholastic Federation championship rings on their fingers and $30,000 backing the trip, Mira Costa’s rugby team is all ready for the Boys High School Rugby National Championships.
For the past two months, Costa’s rugby team has been fundraising $30,000 for its trip to the National Championships that started yesterday and will continue until Saturday in Charlotte, North Carolina. Led by its booster club, the Costa rugby team sold merchandise outside of local stores including Vons, 7/11, Sharkeez, and at the 900 Club. In addition, the team sold raffle tickets for a trip to New Zealand and worked with Blaze Pizza and California Pizza Kitchen.
“This team feels like a family, and this has only made our family stronger,” rugby booster club president Michelle Kissman said.
Because Costa rugby’s season ends before that of other United States schools, it received its invitation to the National Championships after its season was over, resulting in 60 days to focus on raising money. Costa qualified for an invitation to the championships, partially because it won the Southern Section California Interscholastic Federation championship in February and because it was ranked eighth in the nation by the U.S. Nationals Committee’s voting board.
“Raising $30,000 brought us together as a team,” senior rugby captain Justin Johnson said. “We came to love each other and spend more time with each other due to these fundraisers, which is great for us going into Nationals.”
The estimated cost for the trip per player was $1,000, and each player was given the goal of raising enough money to fund himself and one other player to encourage the team to raise more money. The players could chose how they wanted to raise money to meet the goal, whether it was through selling raffle tickets and asking for donations from people on their own or solely working at team fundraisers.
The rugby booster club focused on raising the rest of the funds necessary for the trip to Nationals, and all left over funds are being put toward next year’s rugby season. The money raised for the trip will be used for flights, food, new uniforms for Nationals and transportation.
“Part of that family feeling is that we all need to be [at the Championships], and we’re making it possible for everybody to be there,” Kissman said.
For the team’s final fundraiser, the players grilled burgers and hotdogs and sold key chains, t-shirts and hats in the parking lot of the 900 Club, an exclusive club in Manhattan Beach, on May 14. The team was able to do this because junior inside center David Arredondo knows the owner of the 900 Club, Dave Rohrbacher.
“It means so much to me that Dave supports the rugby program,” Arredondo said. “Words cannot explain how much it means to me to have him backing us up.”
Blaze Pizza and California Pizza Kitchen have donated a portion of their proceeds to the rugby program on given nights.
“We are getting the Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach communities into the rugby movement by fundraising at local places, which is a great representation for our rugby game,” Johnson said.
The Costa rugby team played in Nationals yesterday and will play again today and tomorrow, but the results were not available at the time of publication.
“Being able to go to Nationals is a dream come true,” Johnson said. “We are able to play against the best in the nation, and that is all any of us can ask for.”
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