Last week, Dartmouth athletic direction Harry Sheehy announced that the school’s women’s rugby club would be elevated to varsity status. The rugby club began its campaign to become a varsity team last fall, when four of the team’s players submitted a proposal to the athletics department.
The decision comes just three years after Dartmouth’s women’s rugby club petitioned to become a varsity team and was denied. The number of women’s varsity teams nationwide has increased from 6 to 14 since 2012. Brown and Harvard are the other Ivy League schools that have a varsity women’s rugby team, and the league now requires two additional universities to have varsity teams for women’s rugby to be recognized as an official Ivy League sport.
Both the women’s and men’s rugby teams at Penn remain at the club level. However, there does not appear to be much push to make either sports varsity level. Recently, several of the men’s team members expressed appreciation for the culture that the club sports team provided.
Read more about the Dartmouth women’s team’s transition to the varsity level at The Dartmouth.
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