PULLMAN, Wash. – The Washington State University women’s rugby team rocked its way through the Pacific Coast Regional Championship April 7-8, nailing down a slot in the USA Rugby Women’s Division II College Playoffs.
First up in the Pacific Coast playoffs semifinals on Saturday, WSU blew out UC Santa Cruz, 84-5. The playoffs were hosted by Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.
In the championship game, on Easter Sunday, WSU blanked the host team Humboldt State, 26-0.
National rugby sweet 16
WSU is now slated to play Cal State University Northridge, which won the Southern California championship, in the national rugby playoffs, April 21-22 in Stanford, Calif.
The WSU team is no newcomer to the nationals, having won the 2010 National Women’s Division II Rugby Championship title on May 1, 2010, in Stanford, Calif. This year, they hope to recapture the title for WSU.
The WSU team is currently traveling by van back to Pullman.
Financial support needed to participate
Although the team has earned the right to compete in the national playoffs, their work is far from over. Now they have to put together enough finances to pay their way.
The WSU rugby team is a sports club. As such, it has to raise most of its own financial support. To do that they have been hiring themselves out for miscellaneous jobs in the Pullman area.
“Financially, we are in a better position than we have been in the past,” said Kathleen Higgins, one of the team members, “but we will still need a lot of financial help.”
The team spent most of their funds to travel to the regional playoffs last weekend. Now, they have about half the funding needed to travel to the first round of the national playoffs in Stanford, April 21-22.
“We had to drive this trip – over 13 hours to Arcata, Calif. – because flying would have used up all of our funds,” Higgins said. “So, we are going to need a lot of help from the university in order to advance further.
“The Pullman and WSU community can help out by donating at http://womensrugby.wsu.edu/donate. We could also use word of mouth and advertising to help spread the word about our team and its successes, since a majority of students and faculty at WSU and community members in Pullman
have no idea that WSU has a women’s rugby team, or in some cases that women are ‘allowed’ to play rugby.”
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The brackets below represent both the April 21-22 qualifying Division II playoffs (hosted in four locations nationally) and the semifinals and championship brackets in Stanford, Calif.
