The Clemson University Women’s Rugby team today announced the appointment of Nick Whitrow as their head coach.

Whitrow just completed a successful year with the Rugby South Carolina Academy and Elite youth rugby, previously held a coaching role with the Men’s program at Clemson.

The Clemson University Women’s Rugby program was created in the fall semester of 1995. Jaime Swierczeck and Rachel Ferguson answered an advertisement placed by Frank Graziano who was the coach of the men's team and he was interested in forming a women's rugby club. The team began practicing the following spring. By the fall semester of 1996, Clemson University Women’s rugby had a full team and a full game schedule. The team finished the semester with a winning season, and the winning tradition has continued ever since. The team currently are competing in the Southern Independent Rugby Conference Division two where they finished 3rd in the eastern conference in the spring of 2016.

A USA rugby level 300 Coach, Whitrow has coached for several years including working with the High School All American Boys team from 2010-2012. Coach Whitrow has also worked as the assistant coach of the Men’s program at Clemson, he worked primarily as a skills coach and with the backline attack. In his time as assistant coach the Clemson Men’s team won 2 ACRL titles, competed in 2 Varsity cups, reaching the quarterfinals in 2015 and one CRC championship.

Since then Whitrow created an academy for the elite youth rugby players in the state and took a team to the high school bracket of the CRC where the team went 2-3. This month Whitrow led a Junior Varsity and Varsity team to the Regional Cup Tournament (South) ending with a 2-2 record with the JV and a 3-1 record with the Varsity team. The Varsity team narrowly lost to the eventual finalists Florida Juice 15-10 in the opening game of the tournament, but went on to win the Bowl against Arkansas on the final day.

Whitrow (a graduate student at Clemson himself), his wife, Jodi, and two children, Lily (5) and Ashton (3) live in Clemson. Whitrow is working on his Ph.D at Clemson University and his research surrounds the topic of the student athlete learning environments. Coach Nick is also an instructor in the Athletic Leadership department where he instructs courses such as Exercise Physiology, Coaching Soccer, and Coaching Rugby.