Want to know what is happening in one of the largest rugby unions in the county? The rugby season is in full swing out here in California. We are just a few weekends into league play for one of the nation’s larger rugby unions, the Southern California Rugby Football Union (SCRFU). The off or pre-season in Southern California was not been quiet however. The has there has been the reestablishment of the select sides the Griffins, there has been restructuring to create greater parity within the divisions and now we have PRO Rugby in the picture, and will have a SoCal team (San Diego) and their emergence on the rugby landscape has an ripple effect). To understand what the rugby landscape in Southern California will look like going forward this year we spoke with SCRFU president Geno Mazza.

Geno is in his second term as the SCRFU President, but had also served as the SCRFU Vice President for two years prior to that and has been involved with SCRFU for close to six years. Geno is also a member of Old Mission Beach Athletic Club (OMBAC) and the Director of Operation for the Pacific Rugby Premiership (PRP). Needless to say Geno is the person with the insight on what’s happening in Southern California.



Below is our interview with SCRFU President Geno Mazza.We should note that Geno was available to us and helped us with calls, emails and follow ups we appreciative it as he's a very busy man.

Rugby Republic (RR): Based on your work last year and efforts this year with is the state of SCRFU?

Geno Mazza (GM): We’ll this is my second year now as President (but I’ve been involved with SCRFU for six years). We did have at one point 3 presidents in 3 years, so for now I think there is some stability. With the stability of leadership in place, we can start to lay the foundation on the next steps in growth. Main focus is the clubs and helping them grow. Better coaching and organization with in their club everyone benefits on and off the pitch. The biggest thing is seeing how the union has grown. We are really working to be more organized as far as a union and to help our clubs be more organized. We want to connect the club and the union. We now have the All Stars (Griffins) for our Men’s and Women’s clubs and added an Under 23 Men’s team to focus on the development of the younger player who may not be in college.which involved all the clubs and we had several DIII club players who had a strong showing during the Griffins trials, so we are making everything more inclusive for all the players, as well as coaches.

RR: What are one or two goals you or the Union has for this coming year/season?

GM: One is to improve and increase communication with the clubs and provide greater transparency from the Union. For example we provide a itemized budget to all the clubs and for the first time in a long time we passed a budget with nearly a unanimous vote from the membership. We are trying to invest back in the clubs, so this year we gave each club 10 match balls, ball bag, 15 bibs, 20 cones, just some basic stuff to help them with training and games for this season. We want to make sure they get something for their money.



The other big goal was to get the Griffins back up and running, for 7’s and 15’s as well as launch an Under 23 program which we have how. We were able to get a few games in prior to the season starting. Our Under 23’s played an Australian Aboriginal Touring side and Santa Monica’s PRP team. The Men and Women played the Nor Cal Pelicans on Dec 5th. And we plan on taking 7’s teams to Las Vegas to compete in the LVI in March.