{"id":3797,"date":"2015-05-27T18:34:06","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T18:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2015\/05\/27\/kirkland-to-join-paladins\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T14:47:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T18:47:50","slug":"kirkland-to-join-paladins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/kirkland-to-join-paladins\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirkland to join Paladins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/newsimg.furman.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/kirkland.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-18056 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/kirkland-medium.jpg\" alt=\"kirkland\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/239;\" \/><\/a>Pierce Kirkland, a flanker and co-captain of the Memorial High School (Houston, TX) Rugby Team, has accepted a Furman Rugby Scholarship and has committed to attend Furman.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">Kirkland, the son of Robert Kirkland of Houston, is a three-year starter for Memorial, which finished in third place in\u00a0 Texas High School Rugby Division II in 2014 and was fourth place in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">\u201cAlthough his play on the pitch has helped the rugby team achieve success, it has been his character, his maturity and selfless nature that have made him a pleasure to work with,\u201d said Memorial Rugby Coach Edmond Allen. \u201cThere is no doubt that a great deal of team success was due to his contributions both on and off the practice as well as the game pitch.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">Says Kirkland: &#8220;I am very excited to join the Furman rugby team this upcoming fall, and I look forward to trying to make Furman the best rugby program in division two rugby!&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">Kirkland is the fifth forward to commit to Furman this spring. The class also includes Jeff Rein, John Williams (both of Nashville, TN),\u00a0Josh Hager, (Whispering Pines, N.C.) Austin Willis (Atlanta), Aidan Clarke (Connecticut), Andrew Turner (Oman), Robbie Greco (England) and Thomas Trankle (South Africa). Last fall, Furman captured the Southern Rugby Conference Title and ended the season ranked 6th in the nation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">\u201cWe are very excited to have Pierce,\u201d said Furman Coach John Roberts. \u201cThere are many fine high school rugby players in Texas and we are happy to get one of them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pierce Kirkland, a flanker and co-captain of the Memorial High School (Houston, TX) Rugby Team, has accepted a Furman Rugby Scholarship and has committed to attend Furman. Kirkland, the son [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-rugby"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}