Women's Rugby

FACTS

Formed in 1994
Won no games until new coaching staff on scene in ’97-’98 season
Four Time Conference Champions in past 7 years
Final Four once, elite eight once, and Sweet Sixteen twice in last 7 years.
Four players selected to represent U.S.A. against England, France, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia
One player selected to represent U.S.A. in World Cup 2003 in Barcelona
At least one ASU player has been selected an All American every year since 1999
Receives an average of less than $1000 annually from ASU budgets, but spends nearly $60,000 a year raised by parents, fundraisers, and sponsorship
Played in Fiji per invitation in 2005 – a great honor – Fiji is one of the greatest rugby playing nations in the world
No student who completed their Senior Year has failed to graduate

 

HISTORY 1994 - PRESENT

Women’s Rugby Football was first played at ASU in 1994. The team did not win a single game until the 1997-1998 season, in time for which the students had recruited and began to benefit from the coaching of internationally experienced, seasoned and qualified volunteer coaches, which produced startling improvement and competitive success.

In both exhibition and tournament elimination games held both in ’97 and ’98 during the fall. ASU’s Women were unbeaten by teams from universities from Colorado, California, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah. They won the tournament titles in California, Arizona and Nevada.

1998 was the inaugural year for collegiate competition in our Conference, with no place being allocated to the Conference in the National Sweet Sixteen Playoffs for the National Championship title.

1999 ASU represented the Southern California Conference in the National Sweet Sixteen Playoffs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin narrowly losing their first game. In that season one ASU player represented the USA Under 23 Women’s Team against Canada; another was nominated to the Collegiate All American Team. At the time both of these players were sophomores and graduated in May 2001.

Although many experienced players were lost at the end of the 1999 season through graduation, the freshman and other rookies, a number of whom quickly had to develop into first choice selections for some positions, absorbed the skills of the game swiftly, and the 2000 season of the new millennium was one in which ASU again reached the Sweet Sixteen playoff stage in their search for the national title.

Once again in 2000, ASU represented the Southern California Conference in this competition, being defeated by Virginia and beating Smith in pool playoffs held at Stanford University. Two players were nominated to the All American Squad. Three players represented the West Coast All Collegiate team, the Grizzlies, in the Inter-Territorial championships and two of these went on to represent the USA’s U23 team in an international 7-a-side Tournament in Toronto, Canada. The same two young ladies were selected to represent the USA U23’s 15-a-side squad in Winnipeg, Canada for games against Canada and England. In 2001 one of them represented the USA in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan in major 7-a-side Tournaments. Most recently one player has been nominated to the World Cup Squad in Barcelona June 2002 and the other Captained the USA U23 team. Moreover, a third Lady Devil joins the latter two, representing the USA 7-a-side squad on a New Zealand tour during February of 2002.

In Collegiate Conference matches played between 1998-2000 ASU played 24, won 24 and scored 1130 points and the team was ranked 9th (of 276) nationally in all three seasons.

While both our star players missing, representing the USA in Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan, the 2001 season was satisfactory but not quite what we had hoped. The team, which had taken the field rarely, had any players with more than two seasons experience, and our three best players NEVER played together in any one Conference game!!

While Rugby is a Club sport at ASU, the team plays a full inter-collegiate league and playoff schedule with all the related overhead and expenses, usually receives less than $1000 in funding from the university. During the 2001 season, our expenditures were in excess of $70,000, the bulk of which was travel and accommodations, and for the upcoming season we anticipate that this will increase by approximately 6%.

In spite of the fact that student players hold fundraisers to assist local charities as well as the club, charge members dues and for their uniforms and sell advertisements for our newsletters, the bulk of the funds must either come our of student’s, parent’s or coach’s pockets, or from sponsors – we have only one small sponsor. This state of affairs frequently precludes some talented athletes critical to the team’s success from traveling, which obviously can adversely affect the outcome of games. It is to the credit of all concerned that the team has maintained the accumulative record of 31 wins and 3 losses.

During 2000 and 2001 Collegiate seasons, the team was featured a total of 9 times on local ABC, CBS, and FOX TV affiliates.

Late in the 2002 Collegiate Conference season our Local Territory, Southern California, was awarded a place in the two-year-old National Collegiate Division 2 Championship playoffs. As ASU was in second place in our conference we were selected to represent SCAL in the Elite Eight to be held in Iowa. We won our first game convincingly on a windy but sunny day. The following day however, the northern Iowa weather gods were against us. The temperature was 36°F with a wind chill factor of 22°F. A 28-knot wind blew across a rain, which turned to sleet, which turned to a hail-swept field by half time!! We lost to a good Northern Iowa side (who’s home field it was) for a place in the Final. All in all, it was a good experience, especially for our very young team.

The 2002-2003 season wasn’t our best year ever! Starting in the Fall of 2002 it looked as though we would have a really good team- almost the whole starting lineup returning. However, as sometimes happens, we lost for varying reasons five starting Seniors and two assistant coaches between the end of October and Christmas. We had had our second Rookie’s Tournament in late September which was played in over 100 degree temperatures.!! We took only 15 players, including some real rookies to Scrum By The Sea in La Jolla in November. A real team bonding and building experience for everyone. At that tournament we met up with a great group from Wyoming, one of whom came to Camp Tontozona with us at the end of the season. The annual visit to Stanford and Berkeley was the usual success and we were hosted for our accommodations and a great party by Katie Travis’s parents. (John Travis, Katie’s dad, had played Pro Football for San Diego Chargers and we found out that he’d also played several years rugby following his retirement)

The burden of Collegiate competition thus was thrust upon the shoulders of a number of inexperienced and younger players all of whom acquitted themselves well. While we didn’t go to the Collegiate National Playoffs for the first time in four years, this group forms the basis of the upcoming 2003-2004 season’s team. At the end of the season three players attended Southern Cal’s. U23 Training/Selection Camps in Scottsdale and at Claremont and we congratulate our outgoing President Amanda Gallagos for being selected for the squad. Early in the season we had managed to obtain a ‘Hospitality’ sponsorship from Streets of New York- a locally owned chain of restaurants who provided us with Pizzas and Sodas for postgame functions. At the end of the season we visited a local Nutritional Supplements company, Olympian Labs, where our 2003-4 President Katie Wishowski was presented with a sponsorship check which will enable us to get new jerseys for next season.

For our 2003 Rookies Tournament we are getting adventurous! It will be played over two nights from 7pm to 2am. Ruggers.com, the online rugby supplies company, together with Kooga, the United Kingdom based manufacturer, will be co-sponsors with Streets of New York for this event.

The Midnight Rookie Fest proved very successful with all teams enjoying the cooler late night temperatures- although the finish times did curtail to some degree the post event social activities!! We will repeat this in 2004.

A season plagued by injuries and that repetitive disease "Graduation" caused us to go back to the drawing board for the 2003-04 season but it proved to be a reasonable successful one, losing only three of ten Conference games. Five team members took part in the SCal U23 trials this year with four of them, Amanda Gallegos, Katie Wright, Lindsey DeMoss and Christen Suda being selected for the representative side to play in the Inter Territorial Championships. Amanda was elected captain of the SCal team and at season's end was nominated to the National U23 All American team.

We were invited to visit and play three games in Fiji by the Director of rugby for that nation during August 2004. Unfortunately the tour had to be postponed when the anticipated income from a car raffle didn't come up to expectations. With additional fundraisers and further support from sponsors we have revised our travel plans to play in the South Pacific during Spring Break, 2005. Please click on the FIJI link for a list of everyone who helped make this tour happen. Pictures and highlights of the tour will be displayed once we return!

And so on to the 2004-2005 season and what a different season it has been.
We went into the season with the fewest returning starters ever, and so – here we were going again- another formative year!! A great effort at the Flagstaff 10’s by a completely new starting 10 saw us lose a very hard fought final in the Women’s A division to our own ‘old sisters’ Scottsdale Blues –which had a high percentage of ASU alums in their team.

Unfortunately the November NCAL tour had to be replaced by a visit to another venue. We flew to UNV Reno and played that team and UCDavis, winning both games very handsomely. By Christmas we had recruited some additional talented rookie, largely freshmen, players who have played and developed very well.

The Spring Conference season was marred by singularly bad, wet weather and we were only able to play one home game on our own pitch.

Extraordinary efforts in Fiji Tour Fundraising led by our Vice President Brie Jorde brought that dream tour to reality. Over Spring Break we flew to Fiji for a truly memorable tour. We played, and defeated, University of South Pacific( comprised of Samoan, Tongan and Fiji players) and played the Fiji National U21 team to 19-19 Tie. The team was very ably led by captain, Katie Wright, and although Christen Suda thoroughly deserved the Fijian award as our MVP, everyone who played in both games, did so with total commitment. We’ve been invited back for Spring Break 2006 to play return games – and to settle the Tie!!. So a new Fundraising program is being devised.

On the Sevens front we’ve only played one game so far this season, defeating Embrey Riddell at the Kachina Sevens Tournament, but are off to play in the Las Vegas Midnight Sevens in mid-June.

Looking forward to next season it looks as though we’ll have a far greater number of returning players with experience, so with a good recruiting campaign there could well be some fierce competition for places in the starting fifteen.