The College Rugby Association of America (CRAA) has announced that women's collegiate teams that are dual-registered will be eligible to compete in CRAA's Spring National Championship Pathway.
What this essentially means is the door is open for teams registered with NCR who compete in NCR's fall playoffs to also shoot for a CRAA title.
This is all because, as we talked about in our long piece about the monetary issues between NCR and CRAA, neither side is getting enough competitive rugby. NCR's fall D1 season is about seven or eight regular-season games and then the playoffs. For some programs, that is sufficient. But others want to play more.
At the same time, with CRAA's postseason being in the spring, fall rugby can be a bit sparse when it comes to competition. Teams are looking for fall games, and entering into a conference or an independent schedule within the NCR framework, and shooting for their fall postseason, provides a good slate of games in the fall.
Couple this with developments in CRAA's Women's D1A, and this double-membership is needed. With Central Washington's university funding pulled for rugby, and with Lindenwood moving to NIRA, the five-team division is down to three. Penn State ended up finishing the spring playing 7s, so really it comes down to Life and BYU. While those two teams are enthusiastic about playing each other, but they are about 1,900 miles from each other. Two matches are about the limit.
So, everyone needs more games, and the top programs are very conscious of this. They would much rather play challenging games that are relatively easy to travel to.
Aso, as mentioned in CRAA's release about this, "allowing teams to play in a Fall competition and prepare to play in a more robust and competitive CRAA National Championship pathway creates a larger pool of eligible players for USA Rugby National Age-Grade selection. Under this model, dual-registered teams competing in Fall-based competitions (they won't say NCR but that's what they mean) may transition into the CRAA Spring XVs season and pursue a national championship berth through the CRAA pathway. These teams will also be eligible to compete in the CRAA USA Rugby 7s National Championship."
Penn State, Wheeling, and BYU all plan to compete this way.
