Kaleb Geiger played football and baseball at Concordia University in Nebraska, then he went back home to Sedalia, Col. (population: 177), to work in the family business, logging and farming. One Sunday night in January 2021, the 6' 1", 250-pound former high school wrestler went into town for a few beers with friends.
Little did he know, he was being watched.
In the bar that evening was Peter Pasque, general manager of the American Raptors, a rugby team based in the Denver suburb of Glendale, otherwise known as RugbyTown USA. Glendale’s 5,000-seat Infinity Park has hosted international matches, club tournaments and a team at the top pro level, in Major League Rugby. But that franchise, then called the Colorado Raptors, withdrew from MLR in 2020, after COVID-19 killed its third season, and since then the rebranded team has redirected its small budget toward proving true a rugby cliché: that if the U.S. were to convert a fraction of the domestic athletic talent that doesn’t make the NFL or the NBA, it would dominate the world. Over two seasons now the American Raptors have identified converts, trained them and paid them to play against amateur clubs, pro development squads and teams from South America.
