SoCal Griffin Girls compete in Florida

FALLBROOK – The U19 Griffin Girls returned home from Fort Lauderdale with their heads held up high, and what was possibly their best performance at the Invitational National All Star Championships.

After leading 7-5 at half time, the SoCal girls fought all the way to 19-14 until the last 5 minutes of the game, when Pac Coast scored though a handling error. In the second match, the SoCal girls fought hard once again to go down by a narrow 5-0 to the South.

While the other teams consisted of mostly college players, SoCal was the only team that had a majority of high school players. Unfortunately, even though the SoCal colleges have eligible players, there is no interest among them to represent Southern California U19’s. Even a personal appeal by USA Head Coach Bryn Chivers to the SoCal college coaches did not make a difference.

Fallbrook Rugby had six girls on this team, Sammy Pinson, twelfth grade; Megan Pinson, ninth grade; Lauren Bell, twelfth grade; Nicole Bell, tenth grade; and Jamie Garcia, twelfth grade, who graduated last year.

Garcia scored a try, five points in the game against Pac Coast and Lauren Bell kicked over both conversions for four points.

Eleventh grader Tara Burke also played on another team at the championships, the USA Eagles U17.