Austin Gilgronis re-signed the team’s captain, Bryce Campbell, for the 2022 Major League Rugby season. The 27-year-old center is 6’2″ and 225 lbs.
Bryce played 1074 minutes in 14 starts, scoring one try, for the Gilgronis in 2021. He missed two weeks of the regular season while playing for the USA National Team against England and Ireland as captain.
Bryce is from Indianapolis, Indiana, and graduated from Cathedral High School. He played rugby with the Royal Irish.
He attended Indiana University between 2013 and 2017, graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and Marketing. While there, he played rugby between 2014-2017 and was the captain and Vice-president of the team. He was an Intern at Colliers International Australia in Sydney during Summer 2016 and was also on the Collegiate All-American Tour to Australia that same summer. In 2014 he also attended the USA Junior All-American Camp. In 2017, Bryce was named the Rudy Scholz Award winner as the best collegiate rugby player and twice earned Collegiate All-American honors.
Upon graduation, Campbell moved to Glendale and played with the Glendale Merlins before starting the 2018 Major League Rugby exhibition season on March 10 against the New Orleans Gold Rugby Club. He played 492 minutes in 7 matches in 2018 with the team advancing to the MLR Final against the Seattle Seawolves.
Following the 2018 season, Bryce signed with the London Irish who were in the Rugby Championship before gaining promotion to the English Premiership. Before the 2020-2021 season, he left the team and will join the Austin Gilgronis for 2021. In November 2020, he played for the Ohio Aviators 10s in the World Tens Series in Bermuda.
While in England, he enrolled in a Master’s Degree Progam in Sports Business, Management, and Policy in 2019 and hopes to finish it in 2021.
USA Rugby Eagles XV
Bryce played for the USA Selects in the Americas Pacific Challenge in 2016. That led to an uncapped debut for the USA National Team on 4 November 2016 and his debut against Romania on 12 November in Bucharest. Since then, he has accumulated 39 caps, starting 35 times and scoring 8 tries.
A highlight for the team was going undefeated in the 2018 Americas Rugby Championship and winning their second consecutive one.
He also played in four matches at the 2019 Rugby World Cup, starting three times and scoring one try. His last test was against the New Zealand All Blacks on October 23, 2021, at FedEx Field.
Despite the loss to the All Blacks, both head Coach Gary Gold and captain Bryce Campbell reflected on the match through questions from the rugby media. This pundit, after talking about Blaine Scully, called Bryce, Blaine, inadvertently, and he immediately corrected.
Congratulations are in order for Bryce and Lucie on their recent marriage!
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