Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the United States. The first intercollegiate race was a contest between Yale and Harvard in 1852. In the 2018–19 school year, there were 2,340 male and 7,294 female collegiate rowers in Divisions I, II and III, according to the NCAA. The sport has grown since the first NCAA statistics were compiled for the 1981–82 school year, which reflected 2,053 male and 1,187 female collegiate rowers in the three divisions. Some concern has been raised that some recent female numbers are inflated by non-competing novices.
USA Rugby is the national governing body for the sport of rugby union in the United States. Its role is to achieve and maintain “high levels of quality in all aspects of rugby." USA Rugby is responsible for the promotion and development of the sport in the U.S., and promotion of U.S. international participation.
The Mystic River Rugby Club, sometimes called Boston Mystic, is a New England Rugby Football Union (NERFU) club, founded in 1974, located in Malden, Massachusetts, and Melrose, Massachusetts, who field teams in Division 1 American Rugby Premiership and Division 2 Rugby Union in the United States and are the current 2018 USA Rugby D1 National Champions.
Rugby union in the United States is played at youth, high school, college, amateur, professional, and international levels and governed by USA Rugby. There were over 125,000 players registered with USA Rugby as of 2016. Over 2,500 rugby union clubs exist around the country, including those who are part of college rugby. Professional club competition has existed as Major League Rugby (MLR) since 2017.
The Middlebury Panthers are the 31 varsity teams of Middlebury College that compete in the New England Small College Athletic Conference. The Panthers lead the NESCAC in total number of national championships, having won 42 team titles since the conference lifted its ban on NCAA play in 1994. Middlebury enjoys national success in soccer, cross country running, field hockey, men's basketball, women's hockey, skiing, men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse, and fields 31 varsity NCAA teams and several competitive club teams including a sailing team (MCSC), a crew team, a water polo team, an ultimate frisbee team, and a rugby team. Since 2000, Middlebury's varsity squads have won 84 NESCAC titles. Currently, 28% of students participate in varsity sports.
College lacrosse is played by student-athletes at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. In both countries, men's field lacrosse and women's lacrosse are played at both the varsity and club levels. College lacrosse in Canada is sponsored by the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) and Maritime University Field Lacrosse League (MUFLL), while in the United States, varsity men's and women's lacrosse is governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). There are also university lacrosse programs in the United Kingdom sponsored by British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) and programs in Japan.
The Allegheny Rugby Union is a non-profit corporation whose objective is to promote, serve, and manage the game of rugby union in the greater Pittsburgh area. The Allegheny area is the region described as Western Pennsylvania, Western New York, Northern West Virginia and Eastern Ohio bordering Pennsylvania in the United States of America. The Allegheny Rugby Union is a member of the Midwest Rugby Football Union (MRFU) and USA Rugby.
The NCR National Championships are the national championship tournaments sponsored by National Collegiate Rugby for men's and women's college rugby in both 15s and 7s rugby.
The first tier of intercollegiate sports in the United States includes sports that are sanctioned by one of the collegiate sport governing bodies. The major sanctioning organization is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Before mid-1981, women's top-tier intercollegiate sports were solely governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Smaller colleges are governed by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Two-year colleges are governed by the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) in most of the country, except for the unaffiliated California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) and Northwest Athletic Conference (NWAC).
Salve Regina University competes on the NCAA Division III level and is a member of the Commonwealth Coast Conference and Commonwealth Coast Football. The university offers ten varsity sports for women, eight for men, and one co-ed sport (sailing). Sailing is governed by the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association, and its subdivision, the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association.
The school also offers men's and women's rugby, governed by the Colonial Coast Rugby Conference, USA Rugby and the International Rugby Board. The men's rugby program competes at the Division III level, and the women's program competes on the Division III level in the National Small College Rugby Organization.
The 2010 NERFU college men's Division III rugby tournament featured the top eight Division III college rugby teams out of 32 competitors from the four NERFU sub-conferences. The top two teams from each conference were seeded according to the success of their conference in the 2009 Tournament.
Catholic University of America's intercollegiate sports teams are called the Cardinals after the northern cardinal, and they compete in the NCAA's Division III. They are members of the Landmark Conference, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (football) and the Mid-Atlantic Rowing Conference (rowing). The team colors are red and black.
Division 1-A Rugby is the highest level of college rugby within the United States and is administered by USA Rugby. Division 1-A rugby is modeled after NCAA athletic competitions, with the 40 D1-A rugby schools divided into seven conferences: East, Midwest, Rocky Mountain, California, Big Ten, Lonestar River, and Independent.
The Collegiate Rugby Championship (CRC) is an annual college rugby sevens tournament. The CRC began as the highest profile college rugby sevens competition in the United States, with the tournament broadcast live on NBC from 2010 to 2017, on ESPN News and ESPN3 from 2018 to 2019, The Rugby Network in 2021 and 2023, and on CBS Sports in 2022. The CRC capitalized on the surge in popularity of rugby at major universities following the 2009 announcement of the addition of rugby sevens to the Summer Olympics. Beginning in 2021, the tournament has been organized by National Collegiate Rugby (NCR) under license for the name and logo. Since the CRC franchise was licensed to NCR, the tournament has primarily featured comparatively smaller universities, as USA Rugby, recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the sport's National Governing Body (NGB), holds the official championship in June 2024.
Infinity Park is a stadium in the Denver enclave of Glendale, Colorado, and was formerly the unofficial home venue of the United States national rugby union team. The stadium has a seating capacity of 5,000 people. It opened in 2007, at a cost of $22.5 million. It is the first rugby-specific, municipally-owned stadium in the United States.
The St. Edward's Hilltoppers are the athletic teams that represent St. Edward's University, located in Austin, Texas, in NCAA Division II intercollegiate sporting competitions. The Hilltoppers compete as members of the Lone Star Conference for all 13 varsity sports. St. Edward's was a member of the Heartland Conference from 1999 to 2019.
The Potomac Rugby Conference is a men's intercollegiate rugby conference of the National Small College Rugby Organization.
The NCR XVs Champions Cup is a single-elimination tournament played each year in the United States featuring men's college rugby teams from National Collegiate Rugby to determine the national championship.
The Women's National Championship is a single-elimination tournament played each year in the United States featuring women's college rugby teams from the National Small College Rugby Organization to determine the national championship.
College rugby is played by men and women throughout colleges and universities in the United States. Seven-a-side and fifteen-a-side variants of rugby union are most commonly played. Most collegiate rugby programs do not fall under the auspices of the NCAA and are instead governed by National Collegiate Rugby and USA Rugby, two nationwide governing bodies. 27 women's programs participate in the NCAA.
