OP here: That's so interesting and a great point about being physical. Thanks for the insight!

One more thing: as many of the kids where we lived were heading to UK boarding schools, rugby was *essential* for them, even if they didn't like it. Many of those schools have rugby as a required subject.

We come from overseas where soccer was played on Saturday and rugby was played on a Sunday. It was encouraged for kids to play both at the younger ages and the kids who played both generally improved not only their fitness but their willingness for physical play. As you can imagine, the rugby kids were not miffed in the least when someone gave them a shoulder or pushed and shoved a bit.

At about age 13 though, the kids who really excelled in rugby started to cut back on the soccer (they still played, but started to skip the extra training sessions and optional pick up games). The two leagues in our town had a more or less unspoken agreement not to cross schedules (Sat v. Sun) and they even coordinated their tournaments so when kids traveled to an away soccer tournament there wouldn't be a rugby match that weekend and vice versa.

The post about rugby got me thinking... The coaches always say the kids need to be playing not just soccer, and at that price, we could afford to add rugby cause we certainly couldn't add another travel sport at soccer's price. It's also not too far; we don't live in Great Falls but supposedly they take kids from other neighborhoods. I have two questions if anyone could help me: 1) is it true that the coaches still like multi-sport athletes in this age of specialization or is that old news and 2) if it's a non-school sport like rugby, would that still meet the (unspoken) requirement to play multiple sports? Thanks everyone; my kid is on the young side and we are trying to figure all this out.

Here's the link if you don't know what I'm talking about https://great-falls-youth-rugby.sportssignup.com/site/