The Monterey Bay Rugby Association‘s goal is to promote youth rugby throughout the greater Monterey Bay region. They create community based rugby clubs that are accessible to all bodies, athletic abilities, and genders.
Chance to Excel funded $10,000 to help with the cost of starting up their nonprofit (lawyers, applications, etc) and other start up costs like field rentals, jerseys, and other equipment. In addition to grant support, Chance to Excel’s mentorship explores ideas of The Monterey Bay Rugby Association growing to become self-sustainable in the near future.
From Coach Jeremy Sanford:
“We had our very first practice in Santa Cruz on Monday! Monterey started practicing in December 2024 and we’re recruiting in Watsonville. Overall, we have around 60 kids turning up for practice so far with both clubs and that number is about to really grow in Santa Cruz!
We’ve seen a really fantastic demographic representation – as we predicted, it looks like rugby is going to appeal to everyone!
We are building out teams in each founding community (Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Monterey) at the U8 (non-contact rugby), U10, U12, U14 and HS levels. The HS team initially will be a single combined team, just to ensure we have enough players, but we expect that to grow as well into our community structure.
The non-profit has been officially approved by the IRS, so we are a bona fide organization! That wouldn’t have happened without Chance to Excel!
New Balls and other equipment are ordered and coming in soon! We’re also onboarding a couple of interns from UCSC to help with the organizational side of things…”
“Here are some stats:
Santa Cruz – 30 youth and middle school kids and growing! 14 high school kids and growing (they havent started practice yet); 8 coaches, practicing at Shoreline Middle School monday and Thursday 5-6:30 PM for U8-U14 and 6:30-8 PM for HS kids.
Monterey – 27 youth and middle school kids and growing; 2 high school kids… 4 coaches. They practice at Lincoln Park in Marina (Lee Ave) Tuedays and Thursdays from 4 pm – sunset.
Watsonville – 7 HS students, 1 coach.
Overall, Monterey got a head start in December, Santa Cruz started up in January 2025, we’re hoping to get Watsonville growing over the next month. We have support from the Watsonville Parks and Recs, too. Diego Aguilera is going to be leading the Watsonville group. He is with Parks and Recs and is well connected with the schools and community. I’m confident he is going to knock it out of the park!”
“We’ve also received sponsorships and donations, which is helping to offset costs by creating scholarship pool. So we are getting off to a great start!”
