Atlantis Rugby Turns 40 today!

Atlantis Rugby Turns 40 Today. Here is Will Brewington's Original Crest and Teal Polo

Atlantis Rugby was founded officially in 1986 with the first tournament occurring at Harvard on April 27, 1986. That makes today our 40^th birthday! Our program has a tremendous history and a few weeks ago in Tampa the U16 Boys were given an Atlantis Rugby history lesson as part of the jersey ceremony at Tropical 7s. The video featuring Tim Jaques, Dave Codell (myself), and Will Brewington can be found on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/4xtQGCHpFJE?si=GjQ93J9Bc7jglrj4

The history lesson itself starts at 1:55 into the video and Will Brewington begins his portion at the 6:02 mark.

In addition to the video, there is a writeup below from 2021 when Atlantis turned 35 years old. At that time, I connected with Emil and gathered his thoughts and recollections on how we got here and some of the memories that stuck out the most.

The biggest update from 2021 to now is the fact that Atlantis Rugby now plays high school 15s! In fact, we have a 32-7-1 record in 15s with an aggregate scoreline of 1,095-341 against other representative sides and we have won 6 tournament championships in two years. The decision to expand to that format may have felt a bit odd given our history but as a USA Rugby National Development Program the expansion made sense and has proven to be a huge benefit to the players as they continue to grow.

Here is what we put together with Emil in 2021. We hope you all enjoy reading it and are looking forward to another 40 great years of Atlantis Rugby!

“According to Rugby Today the first rugby sevens tournament in the United States was played during Thanksgiving weekend in 1959 in New York with eight teams from various northeast colleges (“The Beginning of 7s in the US” – April 18, 2016). However, it wasn’t until the 1980s that Rugby Sevens really began to take off in the United States thanks to the success of the nascent men’s national team.

Hong Kong Sevens began in 1976 and brought a lot of attention to Rugby Sevens. This tournament remains one of the world’s premier rugby events and led to the growth of Rugby Sevens throughout the world during this time. As the game grew here domestically the United States began participating in Hong Kong in 1986 by way of a team named the “American Eagles” and the 1988 version of the American Eagles (coached by Emil) won the Plate Final in Hong Kong which signaled we could be internationally competitive.

During this timeframe Emil Signes had begun coaching the Bethlehem Hooligans (who Emil points out certainly did not get this nickname by accident!) as a player coach in 1974 and as a full-time coach from 1974-1984. The Hooligans had significant success in the early 80s and brought home a lot of tournament victories. Emil was happy to see that, in addition to being general hooligans on and off the field, the players also started taking pride in their game and became hungry to participate in more events.

This led Emil to start getting excited about the possibility of going on tour for sevens. At the time, tours for 15s usually lasted two weeks and only featured a couple of matches which left a lot of days in between that were too often filled with craziness. Emil preferred the fact that the sevens approach was different and much more focused on the rugby while also being an easier logistical commitment from the players.

The Hooligans started touring by travelling on Tuesday or Wednesday to play in Saturday tournaments. Emil gave the team one night to enjoy themselves followed by 2-3 hard days of training, which was necessary because at the time a lot of players were unaware of the commitment and education required to succeed in this format and Emil made sure they were ready to compete.

Emil recalls that by Friday nights the players were usually relaxing with extracurriculars to a minimum - it was hard to enforce a zero-tolerance policy in those days and Coach remembers more than once having to face the question “Coach, you really don’t want us to go out tonight? We’re on tour!” (Did we mention these players were hooligans yet…) Nevertheless, despite a bit of pre-competition socializing, the players were good athletes and when they realized that they could be REALLY good at rugby sevens they began policing themselves and success followed.

In 1985 the Inter-Territorial Tournament (ITT) 7s began with each territory – East, Midwest, West, and Pacific – putting in two teams. The East surprised everyone by going undefeated in pool play and earning their way to a championship matchup against Pacific in the finals. The lion’s share of USA Eagles came from Pacific at the time so in the buildup to the tournament they were expected to cruise to a National Championship, which they ultimately did win, but the East made them earn every inch in a match that ultimately went to overtime. After the tournament Emil should have objectively been quite pleased but instead describes himself as stunned, crushed, and determined.

A couple of the East players told him “Coach, that was so much fun, I’d love to play with guys like that again, I just don’t get the opportunity. I’m the best athlete on my team and I have to do everything myself.” Without realizing it at the time these conversations laid down the gauntlet for Emil to find a way for the team to get better.

As a result of this performance, playing for the East became a “thing” and Emil realized just how much untapped potential we had. In those days there still weren’t that many teams playing sevens and even those who were generally weren’t training specifically for it. In fact, Emil recalls overhearing a couple of USA Eagles even saying “What?? Practice Sevens?! What could you even practice?” which is such a far cry from today’s specialized training and development that it almost defies belief.

If players were going to challenge whether training for Rugby Sevens would even be beneficial then Emil was going to rise to that challenge and show that it was. Emil hit the books and found one all about the “keep away” style of sevens which has since fallen out of favor but was unexpected at the time and ultimately successful. Additionally, Emil realized that getting together two days before a tournament was okay but what about using other tournaments for training purposes?

This prompted Emil to ask a whole bunch of good players to come together and play in some local East Coast tournaments to get to know each other, and for Emil to have an opportunity to evaluate them, in order to prepare for success. At first, it was too much to expect for teams to arrive early so training consisted of unopposed work before the first kickoff and a bit of a walk-through before each match accompanied by a discussion of the previous match – What did we do well? What could we improve upon?

At the very outset this was an effort to make the East become dominant in the ITTs but Emil didn’t want to make it equate directly to the Eastern Rugby Union (ERU) because he wanted freedom over selections and the ability to pick players from anywhere, including other Unions, to play for us. However, in a nod to the East, he called the team the Atlantic Sevens, shortened to Atlantis. This gave Emil the opportunity to use the Atlantis iconography to do things like pick the nautical themed kit design. As an aside, Emil originally envisioned a sea green motif but the closest thing that Matt Godek had at the time was turquoise/teal so not everything was perfectly planned out from the start, but it turned out pretty well and Atlantis uniforms and apparel remain iconic to this day. (See the imagine on this post for Will Brewington's original Atlantis crest on his teal polo).

Atlantis tournament number 1 was the 1986 Harvard Sevens where Atlantis sent a senior men’s team that came in second place. Tournaments in Maryland, Virginia, and Connecticut followed and success came quickly with tournament championships in July of 1986 at both Virginia Beach 7s and Hartford 7s. This made it clear that this organization could be seriously good.

However, sometimes it is better to be lucky than good and in one of Emil’s classic great “lucked into” decisions a post-tournament discussion led to someone mentioning that there are lots of 7s tournaments in England and Scotland, and that maybe we could get ourselves invited there, so we did.

Our first international tournament, which was only our fifth tournament overall, took place in Surrey, England, on March 29, 1987 at the Camberley Sevens tournament. This was followed a week later by Sevenoaks Sevens on April 5 in Kent, England. 1987 was a big year overall for us with a total of eight tournaments and after England, several domestic tournaments followed in Boston, DC, and North Carolina before finishing up the year in Scotland. On August 29 we played in Selkirk Sevens in Borders, Scotland, followed the next day with Minerva Sevens in Glasgow, and Kelso Sevens (again in Borders) on September 6, 1987.

Meanwhile, after the East’s great showing the first couple of years, Emil was named USA National Sevens Coach out of the blue and accepted the challenge with a huge smile. Emil was the National Team coach from 1987-1990 and added another three years on as manager until 1993. It should be noted that Emil was also the assistant coach of the US National Women’s 15s Team from 1991-1993 as well. These National Team appointments included the 1991 Rugby World Cup which the United States women won and the 1993 Rugby Sevens World Cup which was the inaugural Sevens World Cup. Additionally, Emil also served as the Women’s National Team coach in Sevens from 1996-2005.

During all the time that Emil was involved with the USA Eagles, he was also running Atlantis and touring more and more frequently to more and more interesting places. An idea that had germinated in the 1980s was in full bloom in the 1990s as Atlantis rugby truly came into its own as a force to be reckoned with in the world of Rugby Sevens. When asked to reflect on this grow, and 35 years of history, the following tournaments stuck out in Emil’s mind:

1988 was our first appearance in Spain at Benidorm International Sevens. The event took place in La Vila Jooiosa in Alicante, Spain which is not far from Emil’s father’s hometown. The last thing Emily would have expected at the time was to find rugby in that part of Spain, but it turns out that Benidorm is a British tourist haven, so it fit.

1990 provided our biggest challenge of all in Emil’s view. For Atlantis tournament number 22 we traveled to Taupiri Sevens in Waikato, New Zealand which was one of the most prestigious tournaments in New Zealand at the time. We knocked off three New Zealand Division 1 sides and ended up with a semi-final loss to Ponsonby, one of New Zealand’s top sides (Ponsonby was founded in 1874 and their website lists 48 All Blacks and 24 Black Ferns who played for them). For our performance we received plenty of praise from opponents and fans alike and then spent some time socializing.

1992 provided a couple of highlights including the Atlantis Men making it to the finals of Limerick 7s in Ireland and facing off against the French National team. We may not have been victorious on that day but the fact that we were even able to match up against a national team this quickly in our history is a testament to the commitment and dedication of our early generations.

Even more notably in 1992 was our return to Benidorm Sevens. This tournament featured the first ever Atlantis Women’s team who won their bracket and took a classic photo celebrating with the Fijian men’s team. Emil pulled off a nice bit of double duty at this event and with the help of US manager Steve Finkel was able to manage the US Men’s National Team who were participating in the tournament while also spending practice time with the Atlantis Women. This was quite a debut for the Atlantis Women!

In 1995 we participated in a tournament that Emil simply couldn’t turn down – the First Annual Sofia Sevens in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rugby trips to Bulgaria certainly aren’t a common occurrence and as a bonus we won the tournament!

As we moved into our second decade 1997 saw our men’s side play three South Pacific tournaments in five weeks with Elizabeth Sevens taking place on February 1, 1997 followed by Adelaide Sevens across February 7-8 and Fiji International Sevens taking place in Suva, Fiji from March 7-8, 1997. The Adelaide Sevens tournament is notable for us because we were able to earn a victory against Queensland which is one of Australia’s top provinces for rugby.

In 1998 we traveled to the “End of the World” for the Fin del Mundo Sevens in Ushuaia, Argentina. We ended up losing in overtime of the semi-finals to the Caranchos from Rosario and Emil showed just a bit of self-cruelty in an article he wrote for Rugby Magazine titled “Atlantis Pushed off the End of the World in Overtime.”

In 1999 Tracey Moens took the Atlantis Women’s team to Madrid, Spain where they brought home a championship and in 2000 Atlantis finally made it to the birthplace of Emil’s mother by playing in Havana Sevens in Cuba. The team had an amazing time in Cuba and also won that tournament.

As we entered the next millennium the fun times continued on with 2002 in particular being a banner year for the program. That year started off with a contender for the most amazing Atlantis tour when the team went to West Highland and Island Sevens in Garmoney, Isle of Mull in Argyll, Scotland in May. That tournament advertises itself as “The World’s Most Sociable Sevens” and Emil notes that the tournament works very hard to earn that designation!

Other tournaments in 2002 included a return to Benidorm, Spain two weeks after Scotland and two local tournaments in June and July at Lehigh Valley Sevens and Cape Fear followed by a trip to Toronto for the splendidly named Magnificent Sevens on July 20-21. That all served as a great warmup for another tournament that is on the shortlist for Most Amazing Atlantis Tour – Torneio de Inverno de Seven a Side in Atibaia, Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Twenty years later Emil is still full of wonderful memories of this trip. Brazil is a great, fun country, and the rugby community there is a hoot. They’ve since hosted Olympic Sevens and started to compete more but even back then when rugby was even further dwarfed in importance by soccer, they still played a very good brand of rugby.

From there 2002 also included Cayman Islands, Singapore Cricket Club International Sevens, and New York Sevens but part of what really makes 2002 a particularly special year is that we closed the year out with a win by the Atlantis Women at Caribbean Sevens in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago in Atlantis Tournament number 100!

As the years continued to progress Sevens tournaments, and select/academy sides, began to proliferate both around the United States and around the world. With our “Sevens Stars” gaining exposure and showing their stuff, we started seeing players scooped up for select-side 15s programs and needed to find ways to replenish our players. This led us to the conclusion that if we wanted to stay at the top and compete in this new landscape then we needed to figure out where the talent was going to come from.

For the first 25 years of our existence Atlantis had provided an avenue for the top senior club rugby players to come together and compete at the highest level but now we needed to turn our attention to not just bringing the talent together but developing it from the start at the youth and high school levels.

Promoting youth and high school sevens turned out to be a great way to show off our game to young kids – and great athletes – because these players could often show their stuff in sevens more quickly than in fifteens. This led to the development of age-grade sides for both boys and girls and over the years we have reached the point where Atlantis has, and has mostly continued to, compete at the U23, U19, U18, U16 and U14 levels.

When Atlantis began 35 years ago Rugby Sevens was a growing sport at the senior level but still mostly an afterthought. Nowadays there are specific high school and college sevens seasons throughout much of the country and there are numerous events specifically for high level sevens teams in addition to a multitude of more social events. There is also a professional sevens organization called Premier Rugby Sevens that launched in 2021. At the time of their first ever event they had 10 teams and 18.1% of the players had come from Atlantis.

It is a great time to be involved in Rugby Sevens and things are only going to get better from here. We can’t wait to see what the future holds and we look forward to continuing to do our part to help grow the game and drive the development of rugby in the United States forward!

Thank you for a great 35 years, see you on the pitch!”