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It will be the second straight year that Cal hosts the conference championship of Olympic-style rugby when the PAC 7s Rugby Championship tournament returns to Witter Rugby Field on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 7-8.
A hugely successful event in 2014 that has added a Pac-12 Networks broadcast of Sunday's championship rounds for this year, the PAC 7s Rugby Championship has further sizzle this autumn coming after the October conclusion of the Rugby World Cup and on the heels of America's qualification last June to compete at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“It's a special year for rugby in America, and we at Cal are honored to host such an attractive event,” Golden Bears head coach Jack Clark said of the PAC 7s. “Some of the best student-athletes in the nation will compete in Strawberry Canyon, playing for their universities in a preview of next year's Olympics.”
In 2014, Cal beat Arizona State, 45-5, to win its third straight PAC 7s title, ending the competition with the most points and tries, and fewest points allowed in the tournament field.
Over seven months since the 2014 PAC 7s, the U.S. National 7s Team competed for a spot in the 12-nation field in the 2016 Summer Olympics and locked up its slot with a 21-5 victory over Canada June 13 at the regional qualifying tournament in Cary, N.C. Former Bear Danny Barrett was among the players who showed excellent form in bringing America back to the Olympic Games, where 10 Cal alumni represented their nation at the last two Summer Olympics to include rugby – 1920 and 1924 – both of which ended with gold medals for the United States.
“We are always proud to see our graduates compete on the world stage in rugby,” Director of Athletics Mike Williams said. “Rugby is the oldest intercollegiate sport on our campus, and the team's coaches and student-athletes have done a tremendous job building a successful legacy here. This is yet another step in building on that legacy.”
Team USA will compete in a two-day, seven-a-side competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio with a chance to earn medals that could emulate the golds that Americans brought home from the 1920 Games in Antwerp and the 1924 Games in Paris.
“We talk a lot about carrying on the tradition of the players and teams that came before us, but since 1924, with regard to the Olympics, that had not been in the realm of possibility until now,” said Clark, a U.S. Rugby Hall of Famer who also coached and played on the U.S. National Team. “It's an extraordinary accomplishment to qualify as one of only 12 nations in the world in the Olympic rugby format.”
Cal student Colby “Babe” Slater was a two-time Olympic gold medalist at the 1920 and '24 Games while nine other Cal players – George Davis, George Fish, Matt Hazeltine, Charles Mehan, Charles Tilden and James Winston in 1920, followed by Ed Graff, George Dixon and Ed Turkington in 1924 – also earned Olympic gold.
Barrett is a native of Pacifica who graduated in 2013 as a four-time All-American and helped the Bears win their first national 7s championship at the 2013 championship in addition to two national collegiate 15s crowns in 2010 and '11. He signed a residency contract with the U.S. Olympic Committee and could feature for Team USA at the Rio Games.
Rugby 7s at the 2016 Summer Olympics will be contested at Deodoro Stadium located west of Rio, with the men competing Aug. 9-11 following the women's tournament Aug. 6-8. The USA women, who also qualified for the Olympics at June's tournament in North Carolina, have University graduate Irene Gardner in their player pool. Gardner, a San Franciscan and, like Barrett, a graduate of her hometown's Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep High School, started her playing career on the Cal club women's rugby team.
Men's rugby dates back to 1882 as an intercollegiate sport at Cal. The Rugby Bears have earned 26 of the 36 collegiate national 15s championships played in the United States since 1980 and three straight Collegiate Championship 7s titles. Its ranks include 131 All-Americans, 45 players who have made 656 combined appearances on the U.S. National 15s Team, those 10 Olympians as well as five players who have earned their “Blues” as graduate students against Cambridge while studying at Oxford University.
Rugby 7s – with its seven-man, 14-minute format perfect for a multi-nation competition at the Summer Olympics – has cultivated significant interest and participation with its inclusion in the next Olympiad. Television network broadcaster NBC, which owns broadcasting rights to the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games, has televised the international Las Vegas 7s and brought the collegiate rugby game into American living rooms since 2010 with the Collegiate Rugby Championship 7s, providing a national platform for Cal's past three consecutive national titles and, more recently, the Varsity Cup National Rugby Championship.
Historically played in the offseason and as a pathway to the 15s national team, rugby 7s also has an esteemed history at Cal with a long line of former players who have played for the U.S. National 7s Team. Since 7s became an officially contested season coordinated around traditional 15s in the academic year, Cal's all-time record in 7s stands at 86-14 (.860), with its 2013, '14 and '15 national titles preceded by a runner-up finish in 2010, a quarterfinal showing in 2011 and a bronze medal in 2012 at the CRC.
At the last Olympics to include rugby – the Paris 1924 Games, which were featured in the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire – the United States won the gold medal by defeating France, 17-3. After the final, the hosts exchanged jerseys with their victorious visitors from across the Atlantic. The French jersey given to Golden Bear Ed Turkington is framed in the Doc Hudson Fieldhouse, the memorabilia-filled office of the Cal rugby program.
Next to the French jersey is another frame containing Turkington's USA jersey, which found its way back across the ocean to Strawberry Canyon. The family of his opposite number decided to reunite the American jersey with its owner as a tribute to both players' memories when that 1924 French national-team player passed away. Ed's son, Ned Turkington, donated the matching jerseys to Cal rugby, and they now stand proudly in the fieldhouse adjacent to Witter Rugby Field as the only known set of their kind.
Those 1924 Olympic jerseys await the next generation of Americans – and the French, who also have qualified – to compete for medals the 2016 Summer Games. In November on Witter Rugby Field, just steps away from those treasures, today's student-athletes will compete for the PAC 7s conference crown with an eye toward representing their nation at a future Olympic Games.
