Lawrence to shadow Premiership Rugby's Harlequins

Life University Director of High Performance Systems and Men’s Head Coach Scott Lawrence will get a first-hand look at a professional rugby club Jan. 30 to Feb. 3, being chosen to shadow Harlequins Football Club of the Aviva Premiership.

Winner of the 2012 World Rugby U20 Trophy as head coach of the AIG Men’s Junior All-Americans and the 2016 D1A National Championship with Life, Lawrence has been a leading member of the American rugby community for decades. Having taken on a coach development role in Marietta, Ga., in addition to the player development aspects of the job, Lawrence will gain influential knowledge of a performance-based organization to share with fellow coaches Stateside.

“I’m grateful to have the opportunity to shadow the Harlequins,” Lawrence said. “A club with nearly 150 years of history – and a founding member of the RFU – has so much to teach both on and off the pitch.

“The outcomes will be head-coach focused. The roles, responsibilities, and interactions within the Harlequins and how they anticipate, prepare, perform, and review starting from real-time feedback all the way to an end-of-season post mortem is an important piece of this learning experience.”

Harlequins committed their involvement to growing the game of rugby in the United States with investments in USA Rugby’s commercial subsidiary, Rugby International Marketing (RIM), and the governing body’s digital video platform, The Rugby Channel, in late 2016. The club has also sent a delegation, featuring USA Women’s Eagle Kimber Rozier, across the Atlantic Ocean to conduct coaching sessions in northern California this month.

“The great part about shadowing rugby franchises is they are generally lean organizations with people wearing many hats and contributing in multiple ways,” Lawrence said. “That translates well to the way American rugby programs and our national teams need to run today.

“These trips are a positive refresh on the latest in the game and I look forward to the end of every one of them to start the sharing process with coaching colleagues.”