History
Competing continuously for over 50 years, The Los Angeles Rugby Club is the second oldest club in the Southern California Rugby Football Union (SCRFU). The Club was founded in 1958 as the Universities Rugby Club. Founding members included Al Williams and Dick Hyland, members of the Gold Medal winning 1924 USA Olympic Rugby Team.
Los Angeles Rugby Club (LARC) has contributed extensively to the development of the game of Rugby Union Football on the Pacific Coast and the USA. Many teams can trace their beginnings to the direct effort of the Los Angeles R.C. or to former members who have relocated and founded clubs in their respective areas.
In 2004, LARC forged an informal partnership with the Manhattan Beach Youth Rugby Club a member of Southern California Youth Rugby an autonomous subset of SCRFU. LARC also has an informal partnership with L.A. Coast Women's Rugby Football Club that began in 2007.
LARC continues to wage very heated competition with long-time rivals Santa Monica Rugby Club, Old Mission Beach Athletic Club (OMBAC), and Belmont Shore RFC of which only OMBAC still competes in the professional Rugby Super League. In 1984, LARC was the Pacific Coast RFU Territorial Champion and Division 1 National Finalists. The 2007 road to the National Championship title ended just short bringing home the Div II 3rd place Cup, and a Southern California Championship. LARC returned to Div 1 in 2008 where they had an enormously successful season defeating OMBAC, Santa Monica, San Mateo and others on their way to the National Playoffs and a Div 1 #12 National Ranking. LARC met Life RFC, now members of the Rugby Super League, in Austin, TX in the National Playoffs. LA came up short to Life RFC who went on to win the 2008 Div 1 National Championship. In 2009 LARC fell just short of their National Title aspirations again losing in the quarterfinals 7-15 to Aspen RFC who went on to win the 2009 Div 1 National Championships. LARC finished the 2009 season with a #8 National Ranking.
Read more about this topic: LA Rugby Club
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)