Women’s Premier League
The 2018 Women’s Premier League Fall Schedule has been released. This fall the league has expanded to ten teams, all culminating in the 2018 USA Rugby WPL Championships hosted at Life University in Atlanta, GA October 26-28.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the WPL. The league will stage the 2018 WPL All-Star Match as the main event of Rugged Rugby Tour Denver at Denver University July 28th, 2018. The match will pit the all-stars from the Red (East) and Blue (West) conferences to showcase their skills and also serving as a selection vehicle for the new women’s national team coach Rob Cain for upcoming Women’s Eagles camps and matches. Tickets to the All-Star match are available through the Rugged Rugby Website.
The WPL has changed its schedule to allow members of the Women’s National Team to compete in WPL Championships, to accommodate upcoming assemblies and matches planned for the Eagles including a match against the Black Ferns as a part of The Rugby Weekend November 3rd and a match against Ireland November 18th.
The 2018 WPL season will begin the weekend of August 18th with match-ups: Chicago North Shore (8th in 2017) at Oregon Sports Union Rugby (6th in 2017), San Diego Surfers (3rd in 2017) at Berkeley All Blues (5th in 2017), Atlanta Harlequins (9th in 2017) at Beantown Rugby (4th in 2017), and Twin Cities Amazons (7th in 2017) at the DC Furies (10th in 2017). Both of last year’s finalists, the Glendale Merlins, and New York Rugby Club, have a bye the first week of competition.
The 10-team format makes every match count. Final seeding from regular season matches will take only the top two teams from each conference into the top tier to fight it out for the Championship. Follow the action and look for match updates on wplrugby.org.