Chicago City Wire

The Chicago Hounds have extended the contract of wing Mark O’Keeffe through the 2026 Major League Rugby (MLR) season. O’Keeffe, who is currently touring with the US Eagles for fall international fixtures, will enter his eighth year in MLR and fourth season with the Hounds.

O’Keeffe was initially drafted by the Hounds in the 2022 MLR Dispersal Draft and signed on December 16, 2022. Over three seasons with Chicago, he has played in 37 games, starting 27 times. He has accumulated 1,667 meters on 192 carries, averaging 8.6 meters per carry. O’Keeffe has made 13 clean breaks and beaten 86 defenders while scoring six tries for a total of 30 points. Defensively, he has completed 156 tackles out of 183 attempts, including ten dominant tackles.

In the most recent season, O’Keeffe started seven times in twelve appearances and played a total of 514 minutes. He beat eighteen defenders on thirty-seven carries and averaged over six meters per carry. This followed an offseason during which he made his international test rugby debut last November.

Before joining Chicago, O’Keeffe played for teams in Austin, Atlanta, and New York. In Austin during the 2022 season, he earned First-Team All-MLR honors after recording more than 1,200 meters and scoring eight tries—including three seven-pointers—for a career-high forty-six points. The previous year in Atlanta saw him earn Second-Team All-MLR honors as he helped lead the team to an MLR Championship game appearance against Los Angeles.

O’Keeffe began his MLR career in 2019 with Rugby United New York and spent two seasons there. Throughout his professional career so far, he has appeared in eighty-three games (sixty-nine starts), scored one hundred thirty-eight points from twenty-six tries, carried the ball four hundred eighty-four times for four thousand seven hundred seventy-three meters (9.9 meters per carry), made forty-two clean breaks, beaten one hundred eighty-six defenders, and completed four hundred forty-two tackles out of five hundred twenty-four attempts.