The National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA) league kicks off on Wednesday with 2018 champions Dartmouth hosting the Long Island University Sharks.

The game will kick off at 11am Eastern Time and will be shown live on ESPN+ (ESPN's streaming service).

Long Island is working its way up through the ranks in NIRA and is now in DI thanks to the fact that LIU plays DI in other sports. In the fall of 2019, LIU was 2-6, beating Castleton and Molloy, while losing to Brown, Sacred Heart, Queens University Charlotte, Mount St. Mary's, AIC, and West Chester. Last season they were able to get some 7s games in against Army (0-3), Molloy (2-0), and Sacred Heart (0-3). Head Coach Jinnie Pratt's team returns only one player who logged significant time in that 2019 team, and that's senior hooker Brianna Thomas, who is a physical tackler and hard worker who played all eight games in '19 and was named team MVP for the 2020-21 season. She will be a crucial leader for a team that is heavy with freshmen and sophomores.

For Dartmouth, this is the first step on a chase to a NIRA title they dearly want. There will be plenty of roadblocks along the way, but they are favored in this game. Five players opted to delay graduation so they could play another 15s season after missing out in 2020. They are center Lilly Durbin, wing Margot Généreux, prop/No. 8 Idia Ihensekhien, lock/No 8 Marin Pennell, and center/wing Grace Player.

A solid recruiting class sees some talented newcomers likely to get playing time, such as Cassie Depner, Josie Harrison, Reign Jefferson, Asialeata Meni, and Sadie Schier.

Recent Olympian Ariana Ramsey is back with Big Green for her senior year. Newcomer Ramsey Tackles Olympic Dream. Also back is 2019 Sorensen Award-winner as the top women's collegiate rugby player in the country, Emily Henrich. Henrich took some time away from Dartmouth rugby to play with the USA 15s team and she is fast emerging as a star and a leader. Now a senior at Dartmouth, she will be looking to once again lead Dartmouth to a NIRA title and, who knows, maybe another Sorensen trophy.

Emily Henrich Wins Sorensen Award

(See Henrich tilting her head to be in the official GRR-Sorensen/Schols-Award selfie from 2019)

Also slated for Wednesday is Queens University Charlotte vs UNC Charlotte in a non-NIRA game (Queens is in NIRA, UNC-C is not), and then this coming weekend Mount St. Mary's is at Harvard (also on ESPN+), Quinnipiac is at Sacred Heart, Army is at Brown (also on ESPN+), Queens at Lander, University of New England at Colby-Sawyer, and in another crossover game, Michigan (not NIRA) visits new NIRA program Adrian College.