USA Rugby runs an online free access webstreaming site for its championship events. Run under the Ustream moniker, matches are often broadcast live and then archived for later viewing at anytime. While it is sometimes unwieldy and difficult to find matches, this year's high school girls championship final rounds for the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th place matches can be viewed at this link for USTREAM-USA RUGBY. It's on the third page of games, since they've added a lot more games since then.
What's interesting to note though, is the viewing numbers. The Division I Collegiate final between Penn St and Stanford University drew 581 views. The high school championship drew 695 viewers when we last checked. If you combined viewing numbers for the high school 1st and 3rd place matches compared to the D1 and D2 collegiate women's finals, the numbers are very similar, with the collegiate outdrawing by 53 views, ths far.
What does that tell you? While this is only anecdotal evidence, and we probably shouldn't read too much into it, it is clear that college rugby isn't (yet) at the level of other major college athletics in terms of fans, funding, and fanfare. Should American rugby be investing even more in the youth game or collegiate as a result? I'm sure we'd love to invest in both significantly.
This left our staff at WGR talking about how many high school sports outdraw college athletics? These numbers should send a message to our collegiate and youth commitees. Let's capitalize on this. If you want to improve exposure, let's improve the national and regional tournaments, in addition to state championships.
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