American women’s rugby has its first Olympic medal (bronze) after shoving Australia off the podium in Paris. It has more buzz than ever on social media thanks to a personable star (Ilona Maher) who stands up for strong women everywhere . The 2028 Summer Games are in Los Angeles.
The Rugby World Cup is coming to the US, too, for men in 2031 and women in 2033. Those yearning for an American rugby renaissance are encouraged, but they have been disappointed before. “The time is now.
The iron’s hot,” said Amy Rusert, commissioner of the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association, the NCAA’s governing body for women’s college rugby. “All the colloquialisms.” She then relayed another: “It’s going to take a village.
” USA WOMEN'S RUGBY SEVENS WINS BRONZE 🥉 THEIR HIGHEST EVER FINISH IN AN OLYMPICS pic.twitter.com/dcB3wmef5l Soccer and football’s less-heralded cousin has long struggled for traction stateside.
Rugby is a schoolyard staple in British Commonwealth nations, but rarely found on playgrounds here. While youth clubs offer touch and tackle games, most players in the American pro and amateur leagues discovered the sport in college. The college feeder system is lacking.
No outside nation sees America as an underdog. But to achieve bronze status in Club Olympus, even for a nation as sprawling and athlete-rich as this, was a clear upset. Given the challenges involved, those who love the sport know there is no guarantee of forward progress.
Advertisement “I just hope we’re here in four years,” Quinnipiac women’s coach Becky Carlson said. Since the 1990s, the women’s rugby movement has fruitlessly lobbied the NCAA for recognition as a full sport — and the funding, staffing and facilities that come with it. After last school year, there were 27 college women’s rugby programs, well shy of the 40 needed to earn full NCAA status.
BC, BU, Northeastern, UConn, and URI play each other in the Northeast Women’s Collegiate Rugby Conference. Harvard, the first rugby school in America, is one of 10 Division 1 teams, and one of five in New England (Dartmouth, Brown, Quinnipiac, and Sacred Heart). Some schools, like Quinnipiac, have solid support and their own facilities.
The bulk of college programs are clubs that are essentially left on their own. “A lot of places want nothing to do with it,” Boston College women’s coach Sam Perino said. “And I get it.
It’s a contact sport. But we let our boys play football.” Advertisement Massachusetts and California are the only two states that offer rugby in their high schools, according to National Federation of High Schools data.
In the 2022-23 school year, seven MIAA schools hosted girls’ rugby teams, with 263 players. That was the second-smallest number of any sport with dedicated teams (not including the smattering of female athletes who play on boys’ baseball, football, and wrestling teams). There are 20 boys’ teams and 830 players in the state.
“Powerful” is what Belmont High girls’ coach Kate McCabe often hears when asking her players in their postseason meetings how rugby makes them feel. “The number of girls feeling that way is tremendous,” said McCabe. “Parents at the end-of-the-year barbecue say it so much: ‘She’s so passionate and proud and has come out of her shell.
’ We hear it so much about Pop Warner football, how it teaches you to take a hit and keep on going. “I’m a woman. I value those lessons, too.
” Belmont is one of Massachusetts’ girls’ rugby success stories. The largest program in the state by participation (69 players in 2022-23; they also have the largest boys’ program, with 84 players), they began in 2015 and have won all six state titles since the MIAA began hosting championships. Their games are streamed on the local public access channel (and YouTube page); and commentators do a fine job of explaining the rules to the uninitiated.
“It’s not a niche sport here anymore,” said McCabe, who noted she recently received an email from a group of girls in Plymouth who wanted to start their own club. She redirected them to nearby coaches. In Belmont, she said, “home games are pretty well attended.
It’s predominantly friends and family, and nothing’s like football ...
but we’re certainly growing.” Advertisement In theory, administrators should be open to women and girls playing the sport. For schools needing to satisfy Title IX requirements, rugby is a quick boost for participation numbers.
The equipment is little more than cleats, a ball and a field. The barrier to entry is low. The community is welcoming.
“It’s a body-positive sport,” said Jessica Hammond-Graf, president of the fledgling Women’s Elite Rugby, which aims to be the successor to the semi-pro Women’s Premier League. “It’s inclusive in the sizes and shapes of people that it takes to be successful on the field. Everyone can find a position.
“At the same time, it’s this gladiator-type sport. It’s in your face. It’s big hits.
It’s tackles. It has an unapologetic, aggressive attitude.” Alex Sedrick with the walk off truck stick to the house for team USA Rugby! This was such an unbelievable moment, Well done bringing home the Bronze Ladies 🇺🇸 #OlympicGames pic.
twitter.com/W8B2YQxqzV WER hopes the stiff-arms Team USA threw in Paris — witness Alex “Spiff” Sedrick’s last-second, tackle-breaking dash down the field for the bronze — helps them move toward professionalizing women’s rugby in the US. WER is planning a 2025 launch with six-to-eight teams, under a single-owner model.
The makeover likely means the end of the non-profit, pay-to-play Women’s Premier League, which has been around since 2009 and has seven teams — including Beantown RFC, which was founded in 1976. Beantown, which was absorbed into the WPL, is likely to become a founding member of the WER (along with squads in Chicago and Denver). The peak of pro rugby locally is the men’s Major League Rugby’s New England Free Jacks, who play in Quincy.
They won their second consecutive MLR title on Aug. 4 by defeating the Seattle Seawolves. Advertisement Most adult rugby clubs play both sevens — the faster, freer version of the game played at the Olympics — and the traditional 15-a-side.
USA Rugby, the sport’s governing body, is focused on the growth of the women’s sevens team that just won bronze. It will upgrade its program heading into LA 2028 with a $4 million pledge from Michele Kang, who owns multiple women’s pro soccer teams, including the NWSL’s Washington Spirit. It is earmarked for the women’s sevens, who train in Chula Vista, Calif.
“What does that look like in terms of coaching, athlete support, the training environment — there’s lots of places it could go,” USA Rugby board member Jamie Burke said. “It will be program-altering. We’ve never had that type of opportunity.
” USA Rugby wants to get ahead of the curve with the generation of athletes who follow Maher, who played field hockey, basketball, and soccer at Burlington (Vt.) High before taking up rugby at 17. Burke, who played football with the boys in high school before taking up rugby, has two young children who play soccer in Denver.
She sees the latter sport as an example. Thanks to Title IX — the 1972 law that was finally given teeth in a 1992 Supreme Court decision that said those discriminated against could sue schools — female sports participation exploded in the 1990s. Soccer was a beneficiary.
The US hosted and won the 1999 Women’s World Cup. Rugby, which counts 50,000 youth players (ages 8 to 14) in 47 state-based organizations, hopes a surprise bronze will shine far and wide in a time where women in sports are more visible than ever. Advertisement “If we do it right,” Burke said, “we can hopefully take that energy (from Paris) and use it as an inflection point.
The Olympics made it accessible. It put it out there. Now we have to keep it there.
” The challenges remain. Carlson, Maher’s coach at Quinnipiac, has pleaded with the NCAA for recognition for more than two decades, and hit a wall each time. Rugby coaches and administrators say there remains a belief system around what women can and cannot do on athletic fields.
“It’s definitely a big hurdle to get over,” Perino said. “There’s a lot of men sitting in a room who think women shouldn’t do this, or that their baby girls are going to get hurt.” But Team USA’s showing in Paris was an example, she said, of what can be overcome.
Look at Sedrick’s winning try. “She just didn’t give up,” Perino said. “She kept moving her legs.
We teach it over and over: if you hit contact, don’t stop. “Time was up, but she didn’t stop. She pushed through.
It was beautiful.” Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.
com . Follow him @mattyports ..
