NIRA DI Week 3: Follow-Up Time
Navy at Lindenwood highlights this weekend in NIRA DI.
However, Army vs Queens (at the US Naval Academy) is also a key game for both.
Unfortunately, Dartmouth at Princeton has been called off.
Davenport Beats Wheeling in Penalty-Strewn, Cross-Divisional Clash
Davenport took on Wheeling Saturday in a meeting of the 2024-25 NIRA DII runners-up and the NCR D1 winners.
Hosts Davenport won the game 42-12 led by two tries from Kara Higgins and some strong goalkicking from Leilani Lepe.
The game took a while to get some points as both teams looked to test each other out and deal with some hard-hitting defenses. Finally, as the first half approached its midway point, Wheeling got a yellow card for not rolling. The Panthers exacted a price for that immediately, with Higgins at No, 8 going over for her first try.
Davenport's scrums were very strong and that allowed Higgins and scrumhalf Sasha Fernandez-Ricci to work together effectively. Higgins added another try that, with Lepe's second conversion, made it 14-0.
NIRA DI Latest: Who Put Their Hand Up?
The surprises keep coming in NIRA DI as a couple of teams made statements this weekend.
Lions Caught Crimson-Handed
Lindenwood made the trip to Massachusetts and were defeated by two-time defending champs Harvard 26-17.
Freshman Sana'a Lunon has started brilliantly and she opened the scoring in this game with her fourth try of the season, racing down the touchline to put Harvard up 5-0.
On the ensuing restart, the Crimson failed to secure possession and Lindenwood surged on, setting up a try for Gabby Bryant. Gianna Diaz converted for a 7-5 Lindenwood lead.
Pivotal Early Week in NIRA DI
We're already into the 2nd week of the NIRA D1 and we've got a couple of pivotal matches.
Stung
Feeling the sting of a big loss, Brown and Quinnipiac will face off in Connecticut and we'll see who can bounce back from a rough start. Brown's late tries against Sacred Heart might be a signal that they already made some adjustments.
"We saw some strong moments from a number of our student-athletes today against an impressive Sacred Heart team," Brown Head Coach Rosalind Chou said after last week's. "We have installed a lot of new systems and have asked a lot of this team in preseason. The team really settled in during the second half, and our bench really infused intensity. We have a lot of great data, so we can improve on some areas next weekend."
Special Program Debut and More from DII and DIII NIRA Games
Outside of the NIRA DI conference there was still some notable games among NCAA women's colleges.
Most of the action was cross-divisional, and a key one of those was LaSalle vs Mount St. Mary's. While the Mount is pursuing a 7s postseason, they are still playing a strong 15s season, and this time they were the inaugural opponent for LaSalle.
After announcing that it would field a varsity women's team, LaSalle took a year to put it all together. Head Coach Kelsie McDowell recruited almost the entire team, so it's largely a group of freshmen. But McDowell isn't worried about the won-loss record because of that fact; instead she's helping the players adjust to college life.
NIRA Opening Weekend: Head-Turning Results
Navy, Harvard, Lindenwood, Long Island, Dartmouth, and Sacred Heart all took wins in the opening weekend for DI NIRA teams.
Of those, only Harvard playing a non-conference game, as the Crimson looked very shark in their 55-7 defeat of AIC.
Here’s what happened.
Defending Champs Open with a Win
First-year recruit Sana’a Lunon opened the season with Harvard’s first try. Longtime readers of GRR will know Lunon as we noted her abilities and interviewed her almost four years ago.
NIRA DI Season Kicks Off This Weekend
We’re ready for the NIRA DI season to open and we’ve got some changes.
The big change is that Lindenwood, having moved to NCAA DI for women’s rugby in 2024, are in the schedule now, rounding out a DI conference of 11 teams.
That conference is made up of teams that are pursuing a 15s postseason. There are other teams pursuing a 7s postseason (even if they are also playing 15s during this fall), while there is also a combined DII/DIII postseason which will allow Bowdoin to play up a level and test themselves a bit more.
With the finals on the weekend before Thanksgiving, the teams have to start early, and this is the official opening weekend.
Now let’s take a look at the 15s DI:
Kick-Start Your Alumni Support with US Rugby Foundation Program
There is still time for college rugby programs to apply for the US Rugby Foundation's Collegiate Alumni Activation Jumpstart Program.
This initiative is designed to empower collegiate men's and women's rugby alumni associations across the United States by significantly enhancing their alumni engagement, fundraising capabilities, and overall program sustainability.
The grant program, developed in partnership with Madak, a leading rugby marketing agency, offers a comprehensive, four-month process designed to provide selected collegiate rugby programs with strategic guidance and a clear roadmap for growth. Recipients will undergo a multi-step journey, starting with an in-depth onboarding assessment, followed by intensive analysis and strategy sessions, culminating in recommendations and a recalibration session.
Could This Woman Drive Real Change in Women's College Rugby?
CRAA’s new Director of Women’s Rugby, Tiff Lopez, has some work to do at the top and at the bottom of the ladder.
From a major collegiate program struggling to find opponents because they are thought to be too powerful () to programs that need help getting on the field, Lopez has a diverse flock to shepherd.
“What we’re trying to do is get teams to buy back into CRAA and help them get into more of a full-time environment,” Lopez told GRR, who has worked as a Conference Commissioner in D2, and as a manager of the USA Women’s National Team.
Central Washington Women Poised for Return as a College Club
Central Washington’s women’s rugby team still exists.
If you take anything from this article, take that away … CWU women’s rugby will take the field this coming academic year.
The program is not varsity. Pretty much every underclasswoman has transferred, and their varsity funding has gone, but they have a coach, they have players, they are welcoming players, and they have a competition to play in.
In some ways, the change for CWU will be a positive. Yes it’s nice to have a varsity-funded team, but the travel—time, effort and expense—wasn’t easy for the Wildcats and as a result they didn’t play a ton of games. Now going into the 2025-26 season they will be in the Pacific Mountain Rugby Conference-North, along with Western Washington, Gonzaga University, Oregon, Washington, and Oregon State.
NCR Splits Women's D1 into D1 and D1AA
National Collegiate Rugby has split its women's D1.
Essentially the competitions will mirror their men's competition, with a D1 level that is a level above what will now be D1AA.
The teams in the D1 competition are five school-supported programs plus two CRAA D1A teams that announced earlier that they are expanding their seasons to find a larger number of competitive games. This also follows CRAA announcing that they are OK with women's teams competing in a fall playoff (NCR's) and a spring playoff (CRAA's). BYU, Penn State, and Wheeling all confirmed that they want to do both.
Iowa Central Unveils Women's Program
Iowa Central Community College is launching a women’s team and has hired Matt Ramirez as the Head Coach.
Ramirez was the Women’s Head Coach at Central Washington, which lost its varsity funding in May. He was an assistant and Head Coach at CWU since 2018.
He now has the job of starting a program from scratch, albeit one that has strong support from the men’s program which has enjoyed success for several years.
While high-level college rugby programs are rare among two-year institutions for men, they are virtually non-existent (if not actually non-existent) among women.
“It’s a pioneering situation,” Ramirez told GRR. “It’s a unique opportunity rather than a challenge. The administration is fully bought-in on the sport.”
Life Women Address Isolation with New Comp Plan
One of the upshots of the changes is Women’s D1A College is to leave Life University isolated both geographically and in terms of competition.
D1A (formerly D1 Elite) lost Central Washington when the school pulled the program’s funding, and lost Lindenwood as they move to NIRA.
With that, and with Penn State finishing their season playing 7s, the D1A had shrunk significantly. Recently, CRAA announced that they would allow teams to play in NCR competition and playoffs in the fall and still be eligible (if they are CRAA/USA Rugby registered) for the spring postseason. Penn State, Wheeling, and BYU are three teams listed as having said they would do both. Life did not.
NCR Names Alycia Washington as Head of Women's Rugby
National Collegiate Rugby has announced that recently-retired Eagle Alycia Washington is their new Director of Women’s Rugby.
One of the USA's all-time greats, Washington just recently played her final professional game in PWR and has also been working to start and grow the XV Foundation.
Washington, 34, played rugby at UConn where she was a two-time All-American, and went on to earn 26 caps for the Eagles. She replaces Angela Smarto as head of NCR's Women's Rugby division.
AIC Seeks Two New Head Coaches as Bonti Takes DOR Post
American International College is making a fairly significant change in its coaching staff.
T. Fletcher, who was Head Coach of both the men's team and the women's team, left earlier this month, and the institution has been looking at a new approach. Yesterday former assistant coach at AIC, Jameson Bonti, started his tenure as Director of Rugby. The chief recruiter for AIC Rugby, Bonti will direct coaching philosophy and approach for a to-be-hired Men's Head Coach and a to-be-hired Women's Head Coach.
Bonti had promising meetings with new Athletic Director Rob Kearney, whose hiring was announced in June. Kearney competed in the World's Strongest Man competition, and is serious about AIC Rugby being a high-performance program.
