Women’s Division 1 – September 2025 Recap

Welcome back to another season of USA Club Rugby and another round of monthly recaps hosted by yours truly. After a scintillating summer of sevens rugby, the teams have headed back to the pitch to play XVs. Some conferences have changed, some have remained the same, some new clubs have entered the picture, others have closed doors, we’ll cover it all right here.

At the start of the year most of the action takes place in the Midwest and Northeast, but we’ll keep you in the loop with what’s happening in the Spring leagues as well. 

Also, the disclaimer (in case you’re new here), all of this information is gathered from team-entered data on RugbyXplorer. If something is wrong, it might just be because the data is incorrect in RugbyXplorer, otherwise it could be because I’m a human and sometimes make mistakes (yes, even me). I’m always open to correcting those mistakes if you reach out nicely! Outside of that, all of the commentary is added purely for fun from someone who has no stake in the outcomes of these matches. So sit down and enjoy as we cover what happened this past month in the Women’s D1 competition.

The fall is the busy season here in the Midwest, so plenty of games to cover. First off, our divisions. The Midwest spits the Women’s D1 into two conferences, the East and the West. There’s a total of nine teams, four in the West and five in the East. The Metropolis Valkyries are the reigning champions of the league after smashing Columbus 79-12 in the final last November. They took on NOVA in the National quarterfinal last May. 

Heading West first, it seems like Metropolis (3-0) picked up right where they left off, as they’ve systematically worked their way through the Twin Cities Amazons (1-2), the Chicago Lions (0-3), and Chicago North Shore (2-1). The closest anyone came was the 29-5 win over North Shore, not even enough to get a bonus point, giving Metropolis a strong lead on the competition. North Shore are in a solid second thanks to their wins over the Lions and the Amazons, both by pretty big margins. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even that close when the Amazons took on the Lions, scoring 51 points in the win. All four teams will face each other one more time before the end of the season, with the North Shore vs Metropolis rematch coming on the 18th of October. Unless some big shifts happen here, we expect the Valkyries to wrap this up.

In the East conference, we’ve got two teams battling it out at the top. The Pittsburgh Forge (4-1) is currently at the top of the table, but two of those wins come from forfeits at the hands of the Cincinnati Kelts (0-5). They did get a strong win over Detroit (1-4) back in August, and their win over the Grand Rapids Growlers (3-2) was almost too close to call, but a win is a win. The other 4-1 team are the Columbus Squirrels. The Squirrels won their season opener over the Growlers 45-19 and followed it up with a triple digit spanking of the Kelts. Then it got a little close; Detroit snuck within seven points thanks to two tries from winger Kourtney Keranen. Perhaps it was the start of a bad streak, because the Squirrels lost their next match to the Growlers 38-7. They did manage to bounce back with a win over the Forge, keeping the top of the table in reach. 

The Grand Rapids Growlers may be sitting in third place, but they are closer than you’d think. They took down one of the top two, and lost by a point to the other, so don’t put too much faith in standings, this former D2 contender is here to play. 

Detroit is another team that you don’t want to count out too soon. Their only win was from their match against the Kelts, but they did get a bonus point in their loss to the Squirrels, and that’s gotta count for something. Looking forward to October, every game is a good game. The Forge hosts the Squirrels on the 11th and the Growlers host the Forge the next weekend. Either of those matches has some serious potential to shake up the standings. 

We’ve got a bit of an expansion to our Atlantic D1 conference this year; New York Rugby Club and the Atlanta Harlequins join the original five teams from last year to stretch the league along the East Coast. We haven’t had a ton of games, but from what we have had, we can tell you that there are some big scorelines up and down the Atlantic. 

NOVA (3-0) have played the most matches of any team, and they are setting the bar high. They toppled Boston (0-1) in the season opener 55-14, then blanked New York Rugby Club (0-1) 31-0. This past weekend, they took down the Raleigh Venom (0-1) 78-5. So far so good for NOVA, who haven’t missed a National Championship match since 2018.

Philadelphia (1-0) also started their season off with a ridiculously strong start, taking down the Atlanta Harlequins (0-1) 97-0. Not a friendly start for the new kids on the block, the Harlequins; but the only way to go from here is up. Nicole Snyder was particularly impressive for Philly on the day, scoring five times for her side. 

The last team in the division, the DC Furies, have yet to start their season; they open on October 11th when they host the Raleigh Venom. Also bad news, if you were waiting on that Philadelphia vs NOVA clash, you’re going to be waiting until March. It’s very likely we’ll have two undefeated sides until then.

The Seattle Orcas will return as the sole Women’s D1 team from the Pacific Northwest region. Seattle plays a bit of a hybrid with the Women’s D2 teams in the area as well as in the BC Premiership out of British Columbia, Canada. They will then attend the Pacific Super Regional to compete for the regional seed to Nationals.

Seattle’s season started on the 13th as they traveled to Oregon and defeated the Eugene Reign 69-3. A superb start for the Orcas (1-0), who narrowly missed out on Nationals last year after falling to the Utah Vipers 33-26 in the Pacific Super Regional final. The Orcas were scheduled to play against ORSU on the 27th, but that match fell through, so they remain undefeated entering October, when they’ve got a full slate of matches ahead including games against Burnaby, Tacoma, and the UBC Thunderbirds.

The Women’s D1 remains unchanged in the Rocky Mountain with the National Champions, the Utah Vipers, competing against Denver Black Ice and the Colorado Grey Wolves. Both Denver and Colorado were scheduled to play the Vipers in September, Colorado’s match was rescheduled until the spring, but no news from Black Ice. As RX hasn’t been updated, all we can do is guess.  We do know that they all played up in Aspen at the Ruggerfest and Utah took the spoils with a 43-10 win over Gray Wolves in the final. 

Last year NorCal was solely represented by Life West, who competed in the local D2 competition before planning to progress to the Pacific Super Regional. However, they bowed out at the last minute, leaving their spot to be filled by the Santa Monica Dolphins who took on the Seattle Orcas in the semifinal. 

Life West have indicated their intent to return this year in the NorCal D1/D2 hybrid league with the Berkeley All Blues and the Sacramento Amazons. We don’t expect matches to start until 2026, so nothing else to report until then.

Last year down in SoCal we had three California-based sides joined by Tempe out of Arizona. SoCal also ended up sending two teams to the Pacific Super Regional last year in order to fill the gap created by Life West’s late drop. Whether this increased exposure and heightened the desire for more D1 teams to join, we aren’t sure. These games didn’t kick off until January, so still time for the schedule and teams to be finalized. 

The Texas Women’s Premiership has a bit of a shake-up this year as the Life University Running Eagles have entered a D1 Club team for the first time. Life have always had a strong collegiate program, reaching the National Championship match the past two years after a run of titles starting back in 2018. Although the Texas season doesn’t formally kickoff until December 13th, Life already showed what they are made of with a 113-0 rout of the New York Rugby Club on September 6th. They will follow this up with a match against Penn State women and the Philadelphia Rugby Club at the start of October. 

The rest of the teams in the Premiership return from the 2024 season, with the Austin Valkyries, the Dallas Harlequins, and the Houston sHARCs competing for the D1 postseason pathway and the San Antonio Riveters, the Little Rock Stormers, and the Houston sHARCs second side competing for the D2. All teams will play each other in this hybrid competition in order to maximize games and increase exposure.

 As mentioned above, these games will start December 13th with Austin hosting the sHARCs D1, the Quins hosting Life, and Little Rock hosting sHARCs D2.