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 UCLA Bruins are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Los Angeles. The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Big Ten Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF). For football, they are in the Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I. UCLA is second to only Stanford University as the school with the most NCAA team championships at 123 NCAA team championships. UCLA offers 11 varsity sports programs for men and 14 for women.
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 Penn State Nittany Lions are the athletic teams of Pennsylvania State University, except for the women's basketball team, known as the Lady Lions. The school colors are navy blue and white. The school mascot is the Nittany Lion. The intercollegiate athletics logo was commissioned in 1983.
The BYU Cougars are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Brigham Young University (BYU), located in Provo, Utah. BYU fields 21 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) varsity athletic teams. They are a member of the Big 12 Conference for all sports except men's volleyball which is a member of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. They were a member of the West Coast Conference from 2011 to 2022. From 1999 to 2011 they were a member of the Mountain West Conference and before the formation of the MW, the Cougars competed in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, the Mountain States Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference. BYU officially joined the Big 12 Conference on July 1, 2023.
The Brigham Young University Men's Rugby Team participates in the Rocky Mountain division of Division 1-A Rugby. They won the D1-A National Championship in 2009 and 2012. From 2013 to 2016 they participated in the Varsity Cup Championship, where they won three championships, defeating rival powerhouse Cal each time.
The Army Rugby Football Club was founded in 1961 and for over 50 years the Army Black Knights have been a leader in USA Collegiate Rugby. The Army Ruggers are West Point's most winning team.
The Central Washington Wildcats are the 13 varsity athletic teams that represent Central Washington University, located in Ellensburg, Washington, in NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports. The Wildcats compete as members of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.
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).
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.
The USA Rugby Sevens Collegiate National Championships is an annual competition among the top men's college rugby teams in the country to decide a national champion in rugby sevens. USA Rugby organized the championship to capitalize on the surge in popularity of rugby sevens following the 2009 announcement of the addition of rugby to the Summer Olympics. USA Rugby recognized that rugby sevens is growing in popularity, participation and interest. At the time of the foundation of the tournament, rugby was one of the fastest growing sports across college campuses. This tournament is a major contributor to the selection process for USA Rugby Olympic athletes.
This is a list of results and records for the USA Rugby National Collegiate Men's Rugby Championships, which began in 1980. The 1984–1988 and 1990 editions were played in conjunction with the Annual Pebble Beach Rugby Classic. In 2010, several of the top college teams agreed to form the College Premier League, now known as Division 1-A Rugby to begin play in spring 2011. This list does not include records from the breakaway invitational Varsity Cup Championship held between 2013 and 2017, nor from the rival National Collegiate Rugby Organization's D1 championship that began in 2021.
The Dartmouth Rugby Football Club is the men's college rugby team of Dartmouth College.
The 2014 USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship was a rugby sevens tournament. The tournament was held on May 30 — June 1 at PPL Park in Chester, Pennsylvania. It was the fifth annual Collegiate Rugby Championship, and the fourth consecutive year that the tournament is held at PPL Park. California defeated Kutztown 24-21 in the final to secure the CRC Championship for the second year in a row. Penn State defeated Ohio state in the women's final for their second consecutive win as well.
David Smyth is the former head coach for the BYU rugby team and current head coach for the Southern Virginia University rugby team. Smyth played for BYU rugby in the 1980s. Smyth coached the BYU rugby team from 1991–2002, and after taking a break, has been the head coach since 2005. BYU rugby claimed its first national championship in 2009, and Smyth was selected as college coach of the year for the 2008–09 season by American Rugby News.
The 2016 Collegiate Rugby Championship is a college rugby sevens tournament played June 4–5 at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. It is the seventh annual Collegiate Rugby Championship, and the sixth consecutive year that the tournament will be at Talen Energy Stadium. The event was broadcast on NBC and NBCSN. Commentators were Todd Harris and Brian Hightower. California won the championship, defeating UCLA 31–7 in an all-Pac-12 final. Attendance for the two-day event was 27,224.
The Brigham Young University Women's Rugby team, formerly known as Women's Cougar Rugby Club, participates in the Pacific Desert Rugby Conference D-I in USA Rugby's Women's College rugby D-I National Championship Series Competition. BYU Women's rugby is a sanctioned team under Extramural Sports programs with the Department of Student Life at Brigham Young University. In May 2016, BYU entered its first national championship final ever as an extramural club on campus in Utah, and came in as runner-up to Penn State in the DI Elite Final. More recently, on May 4, 2019, BYU won its first-ever National Title by defeating Virginia Tech by a score of 48–0, to win the 2019 Spring Women's DI College National Championship that was played at Sportsplex Stadium, Matthews, North Carolina.
Joshua Whippy is a rugby union player who plays for the Utah Warriors of Major League Rugby (MLR) and the United States men's national team. Whippy previously played for the USA Selects.
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.
