NCR Splits Women's D1 into D1 and D1AA
NCR Splits Women's D1 into D1 and D1AA
National Collegiate Rugby has split its women's D1.
Essentially the competitions will mirror their men's competition, with a D1 level that is a level above what will now be D1AA.
The teams in the D1 competition are five school-supported programs plus two CRAA D1A teams that announced earlier that they are expanding their seasons to find a larger number of competitive games. This also follows CRAA announcing that they are OK with women's teams competing in a fall playoff (NCR's) and a spring playoff (CRAA's). BYU, Penn State, and Wheeling all confirmed that they want to do both.
CRAA Opens Door to Dual-Postseason Women's Teams
So the seven teams in NCR's D1 are: Aquinas, BYU, Southern Nazarene, St. Bonaventure, Penn State, Walsh, and Wheeling.
“Restructuring the women’s DI league is an exciting step toward raising the level of competition and creating a true premier division," said newly-installed NCR Women's Director, Alycia Washington. "It brings greater alignment across college rugby and sets us up to keep pushing the women’s game forward.”
As said in this video, women's collegiate rugby is not deep enough in quality to split it up the way it is split. With four stand-alone NCR D1 teams, three teams that will play in both NCR's and CRAA's postseason, about 14 top-flight NIRA teams, and a CRAA D1 in flux that has as many as five very strong teams, those 26 teams need more company.
This NCR D1 will work toward a title with the seven teams split along East and West lines (presumably BYU, SNU, and Aquinas are in the West, and SBU, Wheeling, and Penn State in the East; Walsh could be in either but look to be in the East). The top two from each side will play in the semifinals.
What this does for NCR is take the school-supported teams out of the D1AA competition. In the falls of 2022 and 2023, club team Michigan won NCR's D1, beating school-supported Notre Dame College in the final both times. In the fall of 2024 Wheeling was the champ, beating Southern Nazarene in the final. Club teams Northern Iowa and Northeastern made the semis.
In D1AA, Northeastern, UNI, Virginnia, Michigan, Colorado, and perhaps others such as UConn, Indiana, Virginia Tech, and Purdue would be considered contenders.
