Heart of America Confirms Three Teams Joining Conference
Heart of America Confirms Three Teams Joining Conference
The Heart of America D1AA Conference has confirmed two new additions for the 2024-25 season.
In the middle of what has become an annual shift of conferences and shift between oversight organizations, the HOA already has added Oklahoma after the Lonestar Conference announced a move to NCR and OU decided not to follow.
Now, HOA has announced the addition of UHSP and Wayne State, Neb. UHSP—University of Heatlh Sciences and Pharmacy—is based in St. Louis, Mo., and has been recruiting and steadily growing over several years. The team has mostly been playing 7s, but its roster has grown enough to embrace 15s.
Wayne State has been a championship-level small-college team for years, first in NSCRO and then NCR's D3. This past December Wayne State won NCR'a D3. A school-supported program, the Wildcats has also been geographically isolated and so had to create an independent schedule in NCR—that already included HOA teams.
"It was clear that we needed to move up to a higher division," said Head Coach Bryn Chivers. "We had explored staying in NCR but their D1AA teams were all on the eastern half of the country, or in Texas, with the closest being over 680 miles away, so it wasn't a viable option for the program."
With Wayne State growing its roster, playing at the D1AA level makes sense for the Wildcats and for Chivers.
"Our squad continues to expand, and the Heart of America conference offers the opportunity to play against schools that field both A and B sides. This ensures more game time for our developing players."
"The addition of Oklahoma University, University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy, and Wayne State to the Heart of America adds to both the on field quality of play and marketability of the conference, which now features 10 universities with affiliations to the Big 10, Big 12 and SEC, along with Wayne State College, which is synonymous with rugby in the Midwest, and UHSP, which is building a program with established leadership and values that mirror our legacy member's values," said Iowa State Head Coach Ant Frein. "All three schools immediately add imposing fixtures within the already established footprint, which now boasts all Power-5 Universities in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. All three schools bring marketability as rugby programs and universities, adding to the resources that are available to all our student-athletes."
With expansion to 10 teams, the Heart of America will split into a North Division (Iowa, ISU, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wayne State) and a South Division (Arkansas, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, and UHSP). Missouri moved to the North to help even out the divisions.
The top two teams from each division will play a crossover playoff with the South winner hosting the North Runner Up and the North Winner hosting the South Runner Up with the winners meeting for the Heart of America championship in the Fall of 2025. The remaining clubs will play singular crossover matches for their place of finish in the league.
This is yet another indication of how the NCR/CRAA split is, for some divisions, a geographical split. It's not necessarily seasonal—HOA will finish up its season in the fall, which is NCR's 15-a-side season, so in this case it is not seasonality. But it sort of it, because HOA wraps up its conference season in November, and there's not a lot of time to then spin around for a playoff in the fall. Instead, the top one or two HOA teams can look to an all-CRAA playoff in the spring.
