Why Utah was ideal host to showcase world rugby with Pacific Nations Cup final

SANDY — Kalani Sitake played fullback at BYU and currently leads the Cougars' football program.

But when the son of Tom and Eseta Sitake faced troubles as a child — including poverty and his parents' divorce when he was young — there was another sport that he constantly leaned on.

"I know a thing or two about rugby," he said Wednesday during an announcement ceremony bringing the Pacific Nations Cup to the United States, including the final in Utah. "Rugby was always the stable thing in our life. For us, childhood was rough, dealing with poverty, divorce and the breakup of family. But the thing we always had was rugby."

Tom Sitake played competitive rugby in Tonga, where his son was born. His love for the game continued when the family moved to Provo around Kalani's seventh birthday. He even used the local club in Kalani Sitake's bid for a BYU scholarship.

"My dad would make me go train with the Provo Steelers while I was playing football," Kalani said. "You knew if you could run with them, you were going to be just fine."

Wednesday's joint announcement by World Rugby and USA Rugby that the 2025 Pacific Nations Cup — one of the three largest annual tournaments in the world — would be played in the United States was a full-circle moment for the Sitakes.

The father-son duo attended the announcement with football staffer Jack Damuni and BYU assistant athletic director Peter Esera, and stuck around to take pictures, record video messages and work the room with a group that included Majestics Rugby Club — the local girls club that is one of 38 national champions from the state in the past 39 years.

Utah's history with the game, from the Polynesian pioneers who founded Iosepa near modern-day Tooele to today's clubs that dot the Wasatch Front and beyond, will be on full display when America First Field in Sandy hosts the Pacific Nations Cup final and third-place match Sept. 20.

"It's the most successful sport in the state of Utah that nobody knows about," said Utah Warriors CEO Kimball Kjar, whose team currently leads the 11-team Major League Rugby ahead of Monday's home match against Seattle. "We have an amazingly distinguished rugby community here, with men's and women's players who have transcended collegiate careers to play for their national teams."

The tournament will also serve as a qualifier for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia. All six of the competing teams — Fiji, Japan, Samoa, Tonga, Canada and the United States — are currently ranked in the top 25 of World Rugby's global rankings. Two of them — No. 9 Fiji and No. 13 Japan — have already clinched a berth.

"This is big for us at home," said Warriors center D'Angelo Leuila, a Samoan international. "PNC is a way for us to get big games under our belts every year. It's also big to host it here in Utah; there's a big Polynesian base here in Utah, and the more we can come out here and play, the bigger the game will grow out here."

Of the remaining four, the three-highest finishing teams in the tournament will earn a bid to Australia. The sixth-place team will enter a playoff against a South American squad for another bid.

It's another homecoming for a country that will host the Rugby World Cup in 2031, also a chance to bring a community unlike any other — one that embodies the "hooligan's game played by gentlemen" often attributed apocryphally to the late Winston Churchill — in the suburbs of Utah's capitol, which has quietly become an epicenter of the sport's growth in the United States.

"My most important job as mayor is community building," said Sandy mayor Monica Zoltanski, who attended the announcement at the home of MLS side Real Salt Lake and the NWSL's Utah Royals. "What I've learned about rugby is it's not just about players and star athletes, but the families; each player brings multiple generations of family showing up to support and to celebrate in Sandy.

"And by the way, it's coming to Sandy; not Salt Lake City," she added with a chuckle.

The six national teams will play two pools of three teams each in round-robin play that guarantees at least three matches and one home fixture for every team.

• Pool A: Fiji, Samoa, Tonga
• Pool B: Canada, Japan, USA

The United States will kick off the tournament Aug. 22 in Calgary, Alberta, against Canada before hosting Japan at Heart Health Park in Sacramento, California on Aug. 30.

The tournament semifinals will be held Sept. 14 at Dicks Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado, between the top-two teams from each group, as well as a fifth- and sixth-place playoff to determine the qualifier for an additional berth in the World Cup against a team from a South America/Pacific playoff.

Kickoff times and broadcast partners will be announced in the coming weeks. Tickets will be available for pre-sale Tuesday, May 13, and available for general purchase a day later.

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