Getting girls rugby under official athletic department sanction at your high school may take some effort, and many believe one of the key weapons in this fight is the outraged parent.

Picture how dads see schools support boys football teams, but don't have a full-contact option for girls, and get angry. And they should, because it's the parents who drive the varsity sports discussion in high school. On college campuses that cause is championed by the students, because the students are (almost always) technically adults and they are the ones who need to petition a university (or get legal).

(An aside—it really helps if those same college students act like adults first—make you rugby program organized, well-structured, and involved in the community.)

For high-schoolers, parents are the advocates for the student-athletes.

So here's an example.

A dad in the Fort Worth Independent School District filed a complaint because his daughter was not afforded equal opportunities in sports. The tipping point? Football.

The complaint stated that the district provides "significantly unequal opportunities" for sports participation at the varsity and school club level. The part of this is that boys can play football, a full contact sport, but girls who had expressed a desire to play rugby under the aegis of the ISD were turned down.

Add to that disparities in access to safe practicing facilities, scheduling of facilities, coaches, medical services, and insurance, and what you have is a serious Title IX violation.

(Remember, Title IX covers high school as well as college.)

The complainant, Alex McCulloch, has been advocating for girls rugby to be a varsity sport in Fort Worth for years. And the argument is fairly plain—rugby helps the school district avoid a Title IX violation. 

You can read more about this in the Fort Worth Report here>>