For nearly half a century, women have laced up their boots each fall and spring to play fifteen-a-side and sevens rugby in New Hampshire's Upper Valley. The tradition includes the story of the timber clubhouse that took twenty years to build, the driving directions that generations of visiting supporters have followed up Route 10, the community memorial run that grew out of the team's grief, and a plain-language guide to a game that still confuses first-time spectators.
From Player-Run Club to Varsity Side
This rugby tradition grew up as an independent, self-supporting club sport — organized, funded, and led by the students who played it. Team officers booked the buses, balanced the budget, recruited newcomers, and passed the institutional memory from one graduating class to the next. Today, women's rugby is one of the college's official varsity sports, with a full fall schedule. The club's do-it-yourself culture is a large part of why the tradition endured, and why its alumnae network remains unusually loyal decades after their last match.
Deep Roots, National Reach
Founded in the late 1970s, the women's side built a record that stands with the best in the country: multiple appearances in the national collegiate tournament, several New England and conference titles, and an annual touring tradition that has carried squads across North America and Europe since the 1980s. Players have gone on to earn All-American honors and national-team selection — a heritage explored on our honors and tradition page.
Where the Game Goes Next
One of the quieter facts about collegiate rugby is how rarely it ends at graduation. Alumnae turn up in adult club and masters sides scattered across the country, and the habits built in four-day training weeks — the conditioning, the tackle technique, the tolerance for a long season — travel with them. That afterlife is a large part of why a player-run club sustains itself across five decades, and it is one of the threads we follow on our inside the club page.
The wider women's game offers another way to follow that enthusiasm. The Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 guide puts England's tournament in context: record ticket sales, a final watched by 81,885 fans, and the international competition taking shape on the road to Australia in 2029. It also looks at Rugby Rising Play, World Rugby's participation programme for teenage girls. For a supporter learning the game at the touchline, it is a window onto the same sport at a very different scale.
What You'll Find Here
- The Clubhouse & Pitches — the twenty-year story of a rugby home built into a New England hillside.
- Directions — how to find the pitch, the route visiting supporters have relied on for years.
- Rugby 101 — a field guide to the laws, positions, and flow of the game.
- Cully's Run — a community memorial run for mental-health and eating-disorder awareness.
- Club History and The Season — the record, the tours, and how a rugby year unfolds.
Rugby has always billed itself, in the words of one honorary coach, as a game "of the players, by the players, and for the players." That same spirit continues — for the players who built the tradition, and for the spectators still learning to love it. If the game is new to you, start with Rugby 101; if you're headed to a match, our directions will get you there.