Highland's PR Battle

May 24, 2005 — As Siosaia Vainuku went to accept his co-MVP award at the national high school championship, an award that included an all-expenses-paid trip to the New Zealand Rugby Academy, someone yelled out "now you won't have to pay for your trip home."

Cute. Mean-spirited. And not true. The ongoing story about high school winners Highland is that they are supposedly a group of mercenaries, bribed, cajoled, and coaxed to Utah to win Larry Gelwix yet another national championship.

As a writer covering American rugby, including the high school game, since 1994, I have heard these stories but have yet to see any proof. And that still goes. I have tried to get Highland head coach Gelwix on record to discuss it, but he remained convinced for many years that not getting dragged into it all was the best defense. And yet, despite the fact he has, in PR terms, left the door wide open, I still haven't seen any proof.

That cloud, though has followed Highland over the years. This season, though, there seemed to be a slightly different cloud. More than ever, it seems easiest to merely discount Highland's championships because "we know they cheat even if we can't prove it." It's comforting to think that way.

We at GoffonRugby attempted to confirm allegations we heard. There was no confirmation. We tried to find proof, and found absolutely nothing.

Here is what we know:
Salt Lake City is a destination point for many young people of Polynesian extraction, especially those of the Mormon faith, and there are many.

Despite the fact that many Highland detractors assume anyone with a Pacific-sounding name is in the country temporary, that's not true. The above-mention Vainuku moved to the USA with his family over two years ago. He has a green card. Vai Lutui, another Highland star, is an American citizen.

Highland High School has, for years, been designated as an English as a Second Language school, and as such gets many kids whose parents were born overseas. And often the kids were too. Some of them play rugby. Interestingly, Elsie Allen, this year's losing finalists, had a backline with five different native languages represented in it.

If a kid enters school in most of the United States, they cannot be quizzed on their immigration status. It is actually against the law. That makes it very difficult for everyone involved to be sure somebody is on the up-and-up.

Highland has always been put under eligibility scrutiny, and this year even more si as USA Rugby chased down various accusations. USA Rugby found nothing wrong. As one observer put it, "the Highland eligibility check is a colonoscopy."

The Mormon grapevine is a finely-tuned communications device. Everyone knows everything that goes on everywhere. Highland has been featured in Mormon publications, and young men from New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa who want to go on Mission, or who want to spend a year abroad, gravitate to Highland. Gelwix did tell us he doesn't recruit. He doesn't need to, he said. Instead, players will come to him "and my first question is, 'why are you here?' Coming here to play rugby isn't enough." Many kids come Highland from overseas only to find they can't break the starting XV.

It is really easy to discount Highland's success because of the presence of a few foreign-born players. But nobody mentions that Highland trains five days a week; that their skills and their teamwork are brilliant. That they manage to recruit players bound for DI football scholarships (how many teams are able to do that?). As Elsie Allen head coach Alan Petty said, "all I know is Highland is an incredibly well-coached team. Their running lines are outstanding. At the breakdown they were really good, too."

Do players come to Highland having already graduated from high school? No, says Gelwix. This all stems from a poorly-written and researched article on Former Highland and BYU player Pierre Fourie, which said he took a second senior year at Highland. This is based on a misunderstanding by the journalist, said Gelwix. All around the British Commonwealth, students take school-leaving exams at 16. Pass enough of those, and you move on to the next stage, or you can leave school and get a job. In Britain those are your "O" Levels. But you're not done at high school. If you want to graduate and get into college, you have to take another set of exams when you are 18. In Britain it's your "A" levels. Students who finish that first round of exams do go spend a year in Utah. They have not graduated from high school yet.

Does Highland bring players to the game? One of the more interesting criticisms of Highland is that their players don't continue to play rugby after high school. It's actually a fair thing to say of most high school and college programs. Not everyone stays on. Still, I happened to have Highland's 2000 roster and I started looking for names in this year's CIPP roles. I found Brendan Despain at UN-Reno, Ian Fife, Taylor Kjar, and Dan Poelman at BYU, and Peter Black and Nathan Nerrscher at the University of Utah, just as examples. Eagle 7s captain Alex Magleby went to Highland. Aspen 7s captain and coach Andy Katoa did, too. So did All American prop Blake Burdette.

However: Should you have foreign-born players on your team at all? It's a great question. With U19 rugby being in existence, we hope, to spread the game throughout America, why do we need to put foreign-born players on the field? Well, one answer is obvious; you can't and shouldn't discriminate against immigrants. The other answer is that many schools get foreign exchange students (in my six years coaching high school rugby I have never been associated with a team that did not have one). But maybe we should have stricter rules about this ... limits on non-resident players should be tighter in high school than in clubs, not looser.

However, in the interests of being even-handed, do we even care in other sports? Samoan kids are commonplace on the rosters of high school and college football teams and nobody cries foul.