Four conferences are contributing teams to the College Rugby Association of America (CRAA) Women’s Division I 15s Spring Championship post-season. Teams are populating the regional playoffs, which occur Friday-Saturday, April 21-22 (Palo Alto, Calif.) in the West, and Saturday-Sunday, April 22-23 (Gastonia, N.C.) in the East. They’ll name the two finalists that will feature in the DI spring championship on May 6 in Houston.
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DI SPRING RUGBY: EASTERN
CAROLINAS (fka, Blue Ridge) (4): Virginia Women’s Rugby (aka, UVA) and North Carolina State will decide the conference championship on April 1 in Gibsonville, N.C. Coincidentally, the teams have their regularly scheduled matrix match on March 25, so if they play that game, then they’ll have very recent knowledge of each other come title time.
Three weeks later, both teams will report to Gastonia for the Eastern Regional playoffs against the Florida teams.
FLORIDA (3): Arguably the biggest news this season, Univ. Florida beat Univ. Central Florida in Orlando – the first time that’s happened since 2008. Standings name the league champ, and the Knights have more bonus points and bigger point differential, so unless they drop their rematch against Florida State (the first meeting went 100 points in UCF’s favor), the finish will be: 1. UCF, 2. Univ. Florida. They both have spots in Eastern Regionals.
DI SPRING RUGBY: WESTERN
PACIFIC DESERT (8): We covered BYU in the previous update and the Cougars have added another cancelation to its tally: Arizona State. So far, this weekend’s game against Univ. Arizona is still on the books. The Cougars head directly to Western Regionals with the top seed and won’t have played a ton of rugby before then.
Grand Canyon wrapped up its regular season with a double-header in California that resulted in a 10-0 win against UCLA and 57-3 win against UC Santa Barbara. The Lopes secured second place in the conference and will host 3rd place ASU on April 8. The winner will advance to Western Regionals (Friday-Saturday, April 21-22) as the conference’s second seed.
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PACIFIC MOUNTAIN (9): The PMRC NORTH (4) wrapped up league play on March 4, and Western Washington clinched the title after a 34-14 win against runner-up Univ. Washington. The two of them will represent the Pacific Northwest at the April 8-9 playoffs against the PMRC West (NorCal) teams. That series occurs at Stanford.
There are still games to play in the PMRC WEST (5), but Stanford and Cal will represent the league in the post-season. They’re comfortably undefeated against their three other league mates, and their first showdown was a five-point decision to the Cardinal. Their rematch is this Friday night, March 17, and the outcome will seed the teams into the April 8-9 crossovers at Stanford. And then Western Regionals is in Palo Alto.