This Saturday, Vassar’s celebrated women’s rugby team will meet the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in the Final Four of the National Collegiate Rugby Fall Championship in Houston, marking the program’s eighth appearance in 10 years since the championship was created.
After yet another winning season, the Brewers earned their third consecutive Final Four appearance—and a chance at a third consecutive national championship— with a 38-10 victory over Temple University.
Still, the Brewers say they are not satisfied. A third straight championship in a year when they began playing even more competitive competition would solidify their dynasty.
“The pressure is definitely on,” Lauren Showalter ’24, a senior on the team, told The Miscellany News. “We are playing more teams than we ever have, and other programs have recovered from Covid. We want to show that we win because we are a good program, not because of special circumstances.”
Of course, there is no question that Vassar boasts an elite program. The team competes at the Division II level despite Vassar’s other sports being Division III, and rugby does not even have the same status as those teams. Officially, Vassar rugby is a varsity club sport, meaning that they have fewer resources for recruiting student-athletes out of high school.
Instead, they encourage students looking for a new activity to give rugby a try.
Showalter did so as a first-year. They remember how different practices were at the height of pandemic restrictions and how their love for the sport grew as those restrictions lessened and the semesters passed. Now, rugby is an important part of their life that they want to continue after their final two games this weekend.
“Rugby is no longer the thing I do to get outside and see people,” they said. “It is something I now care deeply about and has definitely become a really important part of my life at Vassar. I hope to keep playing because of how enjoyable the last four years have been.”
Such an experience seems to be what defines Vassar’s program. Led by head coach Tony Brown, the program makes rugby aficionados out of first-time players and puts a winning team on the field seemingly without fail. Especially in recent years, the team has made winning look easy.
Last year, the team won the national championship with a 38-player roster that had 21 players completely new to rugby and only four seniors.
After winning the championship, Brown described the team to The Miscellany News as enthusiastic for a new season—understandably so after such an important accomplishment with an improbable roster.
However, the pursuit of a third championship has not gone off without a hitch, an unsurprising occurrence as a team works to keep its dynastic run intact.
In the opening match of the season, Vassar suffered a lopsided loss to Penn State University. After stringing together three dominant victories, the Brewers dropped a close contest to Columbia University, who they would lose to again in the championship of the Tri-State Conference Playoffs.
Columbia seemed to be a team Vassar would need to figure out and defeat in order to win another national championship, but Columbia was eliminated in the Round of 16 of the Fall Championship by the Coast Guard, who Vassar will play for a spot in the championship game.
As the team approaches this semifinal match, Showalter says they are proud of how the team has handled adversity this season. While the team returned a vast majority of their roster, they lost the only players who had played before COVID-19 canceled the 2020 season and were important leaders on the team.
Still, Vassar has been here before—they defeated the Coast Guard to win last year’s national championship. On Saturday, they will look to show that they continue to belong.