Young Lions at USM
The victorious U16 team featuring seven Lugi boys.
Once a year, the youth of the Swedish Rugby Union take part in a festival of our sport at the Swedish Youth Championships (USM) to not just compete against other, but to meet and enjoy playing alongside other rugby nuts!
This year, the tournament was held in Enköping in conjunction with the national team’s European Cup test against Belgium. In previous years, Lugi’s participation in the event has been minimal due to our lack of youth structure, but this year things were different with the club sending up a total of 14 participants (everything is relative), who played alongside our fellow Skånings from Pingvin (U8s – U16s) and Malmö (U18s).
Our players were as follows:
U18s – Truls Sassner and Joseph Al-Rawi.
U16s – Diogo Soares, Max Andreani, Gustav Kärrholm, Oscar Wahlström, Dag Blomgård, Eskil Bergnehr Smith and Daniel Ringwald.
U12s – Benjamin Wennerlund.
U10s – Joseph Wennerlund, Cedrik Oscarsson, Samuel Löve.
U8s – Maxim Löve.
The U10s as part of Pingvin.
Whilst the undoubted focus for our players was on enjoyment and their growth as rugby players, both the U18s and U16s made big enough impacts to help their respective teams walk away with SM golds at the end of the weekend, a big congratulations to them all on such a fantastic achievement.
At our lower age groups, reports on how our young Lions performed were glowing, with every child helping their teams to achieve multiple victories through their abilities as individuals as well as their ability to work alongside children they had never met before in a team environment. Fantastic to hear!
We at Lugi are very proud of all our kids on their fantastic achievements this weekend and for us this is just the start for our youth section with our aim being to enter some of our own teams into next year’s event. The club would also like to thank all those who have taken time to assist and coach our young players and with special mentions to Björn Wennerlund and Ida Tadić who accompanied our players to Enköping and aided them from pitch side.
Images from the weekend can be found in our gallery.