Ken Pape has reportedly been fired from his Women’s Head Coach position at Wheeling University; the team’s website pages now have removed Pape from the list of coaches for the team.
According to a multiple sources, Pape, whose Wheeling team is set to play Southern Nazarene in the NCR Women’s D1 final this coming weekend, is out of a job immediately.
Pape was hired in May of 2024 to start the Wheeling University women's rugby program. He was very successful in recruiting, and had some of the players he coached at Lander follow him to West Virginia. That fall, Wheeling went 12-0 and won NCR's Women's D1 championship over Southern Nazarene.
This year, his team has so far gone 10-1, losing only to Davenport (in a result later listed as a forfeit win for Wheeling), and will face Southern Nazarene once again this coming Saturday in Houston.
The circumstances appear to be around the aftermath of Wheeling’s semifinal win over Penn State.
The older players asked Pape if the 21-and-older players could celebrate with friends and family, and Pape told them they could.
While what followed appeared to be a fairly run-of-the-mill college social gathering, and all players who consumed alcohol were over 21, this celebration became known to the University and Pape was fired for allowing it.
(*GRR just spoke with Ken Pape and he clarified that some of the players who were drinking were, indeed, under 21. This raises the level of seriousness of what happened.)
GRR reached out to the Wheeling University AD Carrie Hanna, Asst. AD for Communications Zack Zeigler, and Dean of Students Mike Geibel (who was Head Coach of the men’s rugby team before taking the promotion to his current post, and still serves on the Men’s Rugby staff). We received no response.
