The Big Rivers are cutting a new course after some team changes from last season.

Gone is Trine, moving to CRAA to become an independent D1AA team. Gone is Wheeling, moving to the ACR along with five teams that used to be in the NCR/CRAA combo Rugby East Conference. Gone is Principia, who lost coach Philip Kellerman over the off-season and is re-prioritizing to playing as a D2 club under coach Damir Conci. 

Back is Rio Grande after a distressing end to their season fomented by fan misbehavior that reflected poorly on pretty much everyone involved.

But we’re back on the field. Punishments were doled out and served, and the conference has added teams. As outlined in these pages before, the Big Rivers sits as an example of how you can get it right. 

Yes small colleges should be able to play in the same competition together, but school-supported and varsity programs are in a different position, competitively speaking, than club programs. NCR generally mixes school-supported and club teams (which is really a topic for another article), however it’s not uncommon for small-college (now D3) teams to opt to move up after they find success in that division.

Of the last eight small-college champions, six have opted to move up to a higher division. This includes Big Rivers team Iowa Central CC (small-college champs in 2018). We can also add in there Siena, which won the Challenge playoff and then moved up after that.

Meanwhile, NCR, with Men’s Commissioner Brad Dufek pushing this, has taken a stand that (mostly) if you’re a school-supported program, you don’t belong in D2. Queens, Thomas More, Principia, and Adrian have all moved up and out.

But not all of these programs come from large schools. They don’t necessarily have large rosters, and their recruiting pool might different from, say, Brown or St. Bonaventure.

That’s why the Big Rivers works, because the teams are all very similar. They are smallish schools with school-supported programs that pay their coaches, pay for the team, and offer some financial incentives for recruits. The male enrollment for seven of the eight teams in the conference sits between about 600 and 1100. The outlier, Iowa Central CC, has only about 2,200, but remember, they are a two-year institution and so if you look at how many male student-years a school has, they are right there in the same range.

So this is an apples vs apples vs apples conference, and potentially the best-constructed of them.

With Wheeling and Trine gone, Big Rivers added Drury (which has been slowly building its program over the years), Adrian (after their own internal troubles last year), and Indiana Tech (which also spent some time building its program).

Drury played in D2, without a path to the playoffs, and were winning, often with fewer than 15 players on the field. Head Coach Bryan Bevel has prioritized strong students and strong teammates, feeling that he could create a good and smart team with good and smart people—the old “No D*#kheads” school of team-building.

The conference is split into East and West. Thomas More, Marian, Indiana Tech, and Rio Grande are in the East, while Drury, Aquinas, Adrian, and Iowa Central CC are in the West.

Thomas More is reloading a bit after seeing some of their strongest players graduate over the past couple of years. Almost half their roster this year will be freshmen. Marian switches from the West to the East, and comes in with a solid distribution of experience, with some key returners in the tight five. Indiana Tech has a solid recruiting class and while they might need a year to get acclimated, they have done well to bring in local talent from Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. 

In the West, Iowa Central has a recruiting class from all over the country and while at first glance Drury and Iowa Central might be thought of as very different, they are similar in certain ways, too. The main similarity? Student-athletes who attend those institutions know what they want to do, know where they are achieve, and the coaches only want players who will be very happy at their schools. The types of students are different, and their professional goals might be different, but they have goals, and they are smart learners. As a result, the clash between these two teams will become a really interesting rivalry.

Aquinas went 1-3 against Big Rivers opposition in 2024, but they were close in all of those games. Head Coach Lance Hohaia is building something there and he has picked three tough in-state warmups matches, against Michigan, Davenport and Grand Valley State, to prepare for three difficult conference games.