CRAA Opens Door to Dual-Postseason Women's Teams
CRAA Opens Door to Dual-Postseason Women's Teams
The College Rugby Association of America (CRAA) has announced that women's collegiate teams that are dual-registered will be eligible to compete in CRAA's Spring National Championship Pathway.
What this essentially means is the door is open for teams registered with NCR who compete in NCR's fall playoffs to also shoot for a CRAA title.
This is all because, as we talked about in our long piece about the monetary issues between NCR and CRAA, neither side is getting enough competitive rugby. NCR's fall D1 season is about seven or eight regular-season games and then the playoffs. For some programs, that is sufficient. But others want to play more.
At the same time, with CRAA's postseason being in the spring, fall rugby can be a bit sparse when it comes to competition. Teams are looking for fall games, and entering into a conference or an independent schedule within the NCR framework, and shooting for their fall postseason, provides a good slate of games in the fall.
Couple this with developments in CRAA's Women's D1A, and this double-membership is needed. With Central Washington's university funding pulled for rugby, and with Lindenwood moving to NIRA, the five-team division is down to three. Penn State ended up finishing the spring playing 7s, so really it comes down to Life and BYU. While those two teams are enthusiastic about playing each other, but they are about 1,900 miles from each other. Two matches are about the limit.
So, everyone needs more games, and the top programs are very conscious of this. They would much rather play challenging games that are relatively easy to travel to.
Aso, as mentioned in CRAA's release about this, "allowing teams to play in a Fall competition and prepare to play in a more robust and competitive CRAA National Championship pathway creates a larger pool of eligible players for USA Rugby National Age-Grade selection. Under this model, dual-registered teams competing in Fall-based competitions (they won't say NCR but that's what they mean) may transition into the CRAA Spring XVs season and pursue a national championship berth through the CRAA pathway. These teams will also be eligible to compete in the CRAA USA Rugby 7s National Championship."
Penn State, Wheeling, and BYU all plan to compete this way.
“This approach reflects CRAA’s mission to support student-athlete opportunities while offering flexibility for programs to play more rugby,” said Paul Keeler, President of CRAA. “By opening the Spring pathway to dual-registered programs, we are ensuring that women’s teams have access to meaningful postseason play and playing more meaningful match minutes to prepare for the highly competitive CRAA Women’s competition and to increase the number of players into the USA Rugby National Pathway pool.”
Event dates, locations, and further competition details for the 2025-2026 Championship season will be announced in September. NCR's playoffs will culminate December 6-7 at SaberCats Stadium in Houston, Texas. In 2024 the NCR quarterfinals were held November 15 and the semifinals November 15. Wheeling beat Southern Nazarene 58-17 in the final. In CRAA, Stanford beat Cal 57-25 in the D1 15s final April 19. In D1A (FKA D1 Elite) Lindenwood defeated Life 19-15 in the final also on April 19.
All of these teams then will have some options when it comes to 7s. With CRAA finishing off their 15s postseason in mid-April, that opened up a chance for the CRC at the end of April, or for the CRAA Premier 7s or Challenger 7s at the beginning of May.
