USA Rugby announced the formation of the first women’s DI college conference, following in the footsteps of its male counterparts. Within the Pacific Mountain Rugby Conference, the 16 teams are divided into three divisions and represent seven of last year’s DI national championship participants.

The North Division groups former Nor Cal (Stanford, UC Davis, Chico State, Cal) and Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Oregon State) teams into a league. Oregon and Oregon State benefit greatly from the expanded competition, considering their former league consisted of a home-and-away series to determine which team moved onto regional playoffs. But even big dogs like Stanford are enthusiastic about the expansion.

“We are excited about joining the North Division for next season,” Stanford assistant coach Heather Smith said. “It offers us a more competitive league schedule. In addition, this league allows us to play our traditional rugby rivals in Chico State and UC Davis, as well as battle our Pac-12 rivals in Cal, Oregon, and Oregon State ... and eventually Arizona State, Colorado and UCLA through cross-division play.”

Each division is responsible for its own schedule. The East division (Air Force, Women’s Cougar Rugby, Colorado, Colorado State, New Mexico) will play in the fall, while the North and South (Arizona State, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Claremont) divisions will play in the winter. Currently, crossover games aren’t mandated, and the playoff structure has yet to be determined.

“How we address crossover games and our league playoff structure will be greatly influenced by the decisions made in the coming weeks by the Women’s Competitions Committee,” Smith said. “If the committee makes the round of 16/8 regional, like D1 Men, then a combination of automatic seeds and one playoff weekend for at-large bids would make sense. This is a union of 16 teams from five LAUs and three territories. We represent seven seeds from 2011 Nationals. Hopefully the committee will honor that.”

In addition to the Oregon schools, Women’s Cougar Rugby stands to benefit greatly from the restructure. Instead of playing local DII and U19 squads during its buildup to nationals, WCR will face the ultra-competitive teams from the Eastern Rockies union. The South division’s Claremont Colleges has bumped up from Southern California’s DII, while former DI Nor Cal teams UC Santa Cruz and Sacramento have opted to return to DII play.

“Having the top teams in the west connected in this way is important since we are so geographically spread out,” Smith said. “It definitely will help to grow the game on this coast to have our schools, coaches and players connected. It should also allow Ellen Owens, as West Women's Rep, to set a foundation and help other teams move up to D1 level in terms of organization and level of competition. Hopefully we'll see schools from Washington State in our league at some point.”

Pacific Mountain Rugby Conference
North Division: California, Chico, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UC Davis
South Division: Arizona State, Claremont Colleges, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara
East Division: Air Force, BYU, Colorado, Colorado State, New Mexico

The Gentlemen of Aspen 7s program is not dead. Despite the perils of the 15s team, Aspen will have a competitive 7s club this summer, and they will compete in the Kansas City and Denver legs of the West Qualification series.

Andy Katoa is still coaching, but the team will look a little different between the lines. Back are Jake Bowers, Kai Beech (started at prop on the ‘09 national championship team) and the ageless Merritt Johnson. However, several guys who’ve made plays for Aspen the last couple years will not be back.

Ryan Nichols has still not fully recovered from a knee injury suffered in the fall, Leonard Peters is back home in Hawaii helping support his family and Brian Naqica is not in the picture. But possibly the biggest loss for Aspen is their former 7s captain, Spencer Scott. Scott was one of the seven players who had their transfers to Glendale rescinded in the spring. He has relocated to Denver and will stay on with the Raptors 7s program.

“He has played for me for a long time, and I was responsible for bringing him up here from Oklahoma to play 7s and talked him into staying and helping out with 15s, but that’s a decision he made and we wish him all the best,” said Katoa of Scott. “He’s a hell of a player and we’re going to miss him dearly, but maybe it was good for both of us, because he moved on and we’ve moved on.”

Katoa says the 15s team dropping out of DI competition midseason did affect his efforts, but not the 7s team’s finances.

“It affected us just cause the fact that all the kids that I had, I had a lot of kids plan to come to spend the summer, even the older kids we’ve kind of had for a while, and it got in everybody’s ear that we were not playing 15s, not playing 7s. By the time it got around to me, they were already somewhere else. That affected us, but we were able to salvage some of them,” said Katoa

"Our 7s side the last few years, we’ve always gone after private funding, because our 15s was kind of strapped as it is, with all the traveling that we do because of where we are.”

Some Gentlemen to look out for this summer include a pair of crossover athletes. James Aldridge, the former Notre Dame running back, is going on summer two of playing rugby and doing so in Aspen. He played with NYAC last year and spent time with the Spearhead Academy and in the 7s Eagles camps.

Corey Council, a former Bethune-Cookman running back, is also supposed to play for Katoa. He hasn’t landed in Aspen yet, but National Team coach Al Caravelli seems confident he will.

Tana Afeaki is another gridiron convert, but the BYU football player and former Highland fullback has plenty of rugby experience. He played with Aspen in Las Vegas in February, and he’ll be back in the leaf-clad jersey this summer.

Katoa has a young, inexperienced squad and knows it, but that won’t stop him and the new-look Gentlemen of Aspen from trying to qualify for their fifth-straight trip to Nationals.