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By Alex Goff (Dimitri Efthimiou is the scoring threat on the outside for Mystic, and at 19 is still the player with the most high-level 7s experience.)
The Northeast gets three seeds to the National Club 7s Championships, and most observers are pretty sure who the first two will be: NYAC and Boston.
But what about #3? Most might expect to see Old Blue, national champions in 2005 and runners up in 2006. Some might look further down the standings and think Long Island. But if you’re looking for a dark horse, look at Boston-area club Mystic River.
Led by 19-year-old wing and USA hopeful Dimitri Efthimiou, Mystic River has slowly begun to catch fire, and this weekend could be the weekend everyone else gets burned.
“Everyone on the team is pretty new to the game,” Efthimiou told RUGBYMag.com. “Most have really only been practicing for a month. So it’s taken some time to get into it.”
But they have. Efthimiou has brought some ideas and drills from the national team and is captaining the squad as well.
“They’ve played a lot of XVs and some social 7s, but this is different,” said the wing. “But we are definitely picking up. This week we’ve had a really good week of practice.”
The key for Mystic, said Efthimiou, is to take care of the restarts. They have had trouble retaining their own kicks which, the Mystic 7s captain said, can make it tough to get a scoring streak going.
“It’s one of those things where we’ve been working on our basic 7s skills and haven’t spent a lot of time on restarts, but against NYAC we didn’t win any of our own kicks and that was a problem,” Efthimiou said. “This week we spent a lot of time on it, working on getting up high and getting the ball back to our teammates. Kar Darragh puts up a great, high kickoff, we just need to help him.”
Darragh is part of a team that also features former USA U19 player Chris Tofte and Evan O’Driscoll, and which continues to improve.
For Efthimiou this could be a last hurrah for him at Mystic. He exploded onto the scene with the club, but now is looking at a trial with the Leicester Tigers program. Born in Greece, Efthimiou would be able to play in Europe as a European. Right now he’s just trying to get Mystic to the national tournament, and seeing what happens after that.
USA 7s coach Al Caravelli is high on the young speedster and says "this is an ideal opportunity for Dimitri to shine. Both of the wings on the national team are taking overseas contracts, so there's an opening there. He's getting better and being put in a leadership position can only be good for him."
And good for Mystic too, especially if they make the national finals.
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