In spring 2021, four high school girls’ rugby teams gathered in Clinton Township, New Jersey, in front of family and a handful of collegiate coaches and recruiters for the first Mid-Atlantic Women’s Rugby Showcase. That modest event, held at the tail-end of the Covid-19 pandemic, allowed talented young ruggers to be seen and has blossomed into the East Coast’s premier women’s rugby recruiting expo. Now known as the Rugby Showcase East, the purpose remains the same as it did five years ago: Give young women’s rugby players the opportunity to pursue rugby after high school. [lead photo: Lindsay Eisenhart]
This year’s event marks a five-year journey for many of the showcase’s original cast, like director Brian Ahern, who believes the showcase has had an impact on more than just the recruiting side of girls’ rugby.
“Rugby at the high school level has exploded exponentially in skill set,” he said. “The contact area has gotten so much more physical. The ball handling skills have gotten better. Everything has gotten more and more advanced.”
The opportunity for these young women to play against teams they wouldn’t usually face during their normal season, teams from beyond the East Coast, has created a new level of competition for these players and their coaches to adjust to and compete with.
The original four teams in 2021 were Aspetuck Valley Rugby Club, Doylestown Rugby, Play Rugby USA and Morris Rugby, all being from the tri-state area. Since then, teams like North Bay Rugby from Maryland, and Raleigh Cobras from North Carolina have joined in. In 2024, the Illinois Selects Tornadoes drove to N.J. to compete at the showcase. Many recurring teams compete in home-state leagues, as well as the Elite Girls Rugby League, like 2025 NY State Champions Corning Rugby, and the top two teams in Pennsylvania in 2025, Doylestown Rugby and Downingtown Rugby Club.
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“Playing teams that are just as good and better just makes our team better,” said Aspetuck sophomore Cara Doherty. “Our players can go back to their home teams and share the knowledge they learn from everyone else.”
The same as Doherty is felt by Corning senior Jordan Hill, who believes the weekend has had a huge impact on her rugby career, given the opportunity to compete in high-level competition outside of New York state. As a current senior, she was recruited at the showcase last year, and will be taking her talents to Emory and Henry College’s NCAA Division II rugby program this fall.
Twenty-seven different colleges and universities were represented at this year’s showcase, seven more than in 2024. Programs from NCAA DI, II and III, as well as NCR DI, II and III. A wide variety of schools with many different rugby atmospheres. Programs like NCAA DI Sacred Heart University and NCAA DIII Bowdoin College have been recruiting at the Rugby Showcase East since its beginning, and are grateful for the structure and development. Sacred Heart Head Coach Michelle Reed feels like the tournament’s coordinators and staff have always valued the college coaches’ opinions and thoughts in order to improve and adapt the event over the years. For example, the creation of the online database where they can access players’ information, picture, and make a request for the player to speak with them during the official recruit-meeting portion of the weekend.
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She also enjoys how all the college coaches get to hang out and speak with each other.
“Even though we’re competitors, it’s fun to be personal with the person you’re playing against,” Reed said of the coaches’ camaraderie. “We get that fun environment, we’re all around the same area chatting about the games.”
James Read, assistant coach at Bowdoin College, is one of those familiar faces in the recruiters tent. He is very pleased with the talent his program has been able to find there over the years, as well as the variety of rugby he is able to watch over the two days. One of the most unique parts of the tournament is also Read’s favorite part; the motley games on Day 2. All the teams’ players are mixed and matched into different squads for the opportunity to play games with a new set of teammates, on the fly.
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“It’s fascinating to see people playing together that don’t usually,” Read said.
Those “motley games” have been around since year one, starting with just a single “all-recruits” game in 2021, but they have evolved into U-16 matches as well as a “recruitables” game.
Another expansion the tournament has made is the inclusion of individual player registration. While individual players were able to register back in 2021, the amount of those “unattached” girls has grown year-by-year, and this year the showcase had enough individuals to form an “unattached” team to compete. One of those girls was Phalon Parr, a junior who plays for Fairport Rugby in Connecticut. As a rising senior, it was important for Phalon to attend this event in the peak of her recruiting timeline, and she believes it was great to come as an independent player and get her name out there.
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“It was 100% worth it. … I would recommend my teammates to come next year,” Phalon expressed following the “recruitables” game on Day 2, where she showed off on the field most notably with an intercept try.
Having the option to attend the showcase whether your whole team comes or not is a great asset for the level of competition at the event, but naturally everyone is hoping in the future more and more teams register and take part. When asked if there were any improvements that could be made, Bowdoin’s Coach Read simply noted, “More teams is always better.”
So did Sacred Heart assistant coach Salvatore Tondi, who pointed out how in previous years it was fantastic to have the opportunity to see players from Arizona, who they would never normally have the chance of not only spectating, but also speaking with.
Ahern agrees and hopes to see more national representation in the coming years, not only at the Rugby Showcase, but in the Elite Girls Rugby League as well. The EGRL was established in 2021, like the showcase, through efforts from the leadership of Morris, Doylestown, Aspetuck Valley, North Bay and West Carroll. The two entities have worked hand-in-hand, with the showcase hosting the EGRL semifinals and championships annually since 2022, and the EGRL Youtube page hosting the broadcast streaming of the showcase, for example.
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But while expansion is on the forefront of Brian Ahern’s mind, it is not alone, as Ahern is mostly grateful for the hands that have built this event to how it is today.
“Massive thanks to Mike Eisenhart and all he does for running the league and making sure that everything stays organized and structured,” Ahern said. “He has been herding cats pretty much all of his life…And of course thanks to all the Morris Rugby Club families for all of their volunteerism and commitment.”
It is not an easy task to execute a high-level rugby tournament and recruiting event, but the work being done at the Rugby Showcase East annually has proven that “If you build it, they will come.” Over the past five years, hundreds of female rugby players have been given the opportunity to play high-level rugby in the NCR, NIRA, CRAA, and more, thanks in part to the establishment of this one weekend in June.