The team took home its first national championship in 1998, 16 years after its inception.

The championship team, the first fully female-coached team to win the title, sold raffle tickets and t-shirts to help pay for travel. At a time when the country did not have a single women’s varsity rugby team, the squad drove itself to games and worked without staff medical aid. In a 1998 Crimson feature, a player recalled one injured Dartmouth opponent who was denied access to the ice allocated for varsity teams.

Thirteen years later, when the team celebrated its second national championship in 2011, little had changed. That team, current co-captain Xanni Brown said, still used dues to pay travel fees and referee salaries. Team leaders had to scramble for field space, and nobody had access to a trainer.

“We practiced on the rugby field [with] goose poop all over it,” Brown recalled. “In the winter, [our only practice time] was from 10 to midnight on Wednesdays. Freshman year, when we qualified for nationals in the fall and had our competition in the spring, we got to prepare one night a week.”

A TRANSITION BEGINS

Despite the team’s national success, the transition to varsity was not a simple one. First, the ruggers had to decide amongst themselves whether they really wanted to go varsity.

For many players, the increased time commitment was daunting, and some were concerned with the fact that the team would lose its ability to construct its own schedule and pick its own coach.

“There were definitely people on both sides,” co-captain Ali Haber said. “People were excited, saying that we were a really good team and deserve to get support and continue our tradition of excellence. But then people were worried about losing our autonomy.”

Players also feared that, if the team moved up to the varsity level, the unique Radcliffe culture could potentially lose its centrality to the team identity. This concern drove much of the initial hesitation.

“I think it was more the worry about how the club would change,” said Janelle Lambert ’12, who captained the team beginning in the spring of 2011. “We were a very tight-knit community with a lot of support from alumni, and they all went through it as a club team. So we were a little worried about changing the spirit of the team.”

But when the team won its second national championship that spring, more players began to embrace the possibility of going varsity. The team had always been competitive, but the players wanted to take the next step. The varsity movement picked up traction.

“We spent a lot of time at the gym, we spent a lot of time on the field,” Lambert said. “We just spent a lot more time preparing and became much more competitive. I think we realized how much we wanted to be a seriously competitive team.”

CHANGE IN MOTION

With an emerging consensus among members about going varsity, the team decided to bring the topic up with the Athletic Department. Team leaders sent in a letter expressing Radcliffe Rugby’s commitment to becoming a varsity team and competing at the highest level.

Eight years after Eastern Illinois had become the first varsity women’s rugby team, the Crimson was aiming to become the sixth.