For evidence that Colorado is the epicenter of American women’s rugby, rewind to last weekend.
Trailing on the final play in extra time of the national championship, the Colorado Gray Wolves banded together for a driving maul to win on a dramatic walk-off try for the club’s record fifth title.
The score lifted the Gray Wolves to a 31-27 victory over the Berkeley All Blues to capture the Legacy Cup in North Carolina, where the sport bridged the gap between the long-running Women’s Premier League (an amateur, pay-to-pay circuit) and forthcoming Women’s Elite Rugby, the first professional women’s rugby league in the U.S., debuting in 2025.
In that championship tournament put on by WER, the Gray Wolves epitomized how Colorado stands at the confluence of the past, present and future of women’s rugby in the United States.
“This title puts a stamp on the past because we have such a legacy of women’s rugby here in Colorado,” explained Gray Wolves player Carson Hann. “Coming from Colorado, and considering the grassroots rugby here, it’s really important to tell the country that women’s rugby isn’t just a fad. We’ve been around, and the world’s just now starting to pay attention. Because like (the title match showed), we can deliver exciting games and we can deliver great level of play.”
The first known competitive women’s rugby teams were in Colorado when the CU and CSU squads were formed in 1971. The first women’s college championships were also held in the Centennial State.
From those roots, Colorado continued to be at the forefront of the women’s game. The Scarlet Harlots and Denver Blues were early forerunners of the sport as women’s teams in the 1970s, and then in 1981 the progenitor to the Gray Wolves, the Harlequin Olde Girls, were established.
The Olde Girls eventually became the Glendale Raptors in 2007, which then became the Glendale Merlins and finally the Gray Wolves in 2020. Since the founding of the WPL in 2009, the Raptors/Merlins/Gray Wolves have been the league’s most successful franchise.
Going forward, local women’s rugby has a chance to build off that history with what Gray Wolves coach (and now WER’s director of rugby) Jamie Burke calls “a big opportunity moment for Denver and for Colorado in the history of women’s pro sports in this state.”
Previously, the only pro women’s sports team in Colorado was the Xplosion, a women’s basketball franchise that competed in the American Basketball League from 1996 to ’98.
“In (2033), when the U.S. will host the Women’s Rugby World Cup, by that point I see the WER as one of the premier rugby leagues for women in the entire world,” said projected Gray Wolves player Caitlin Weigel, who’s been on the players committee that explored the transition from WPL to WER. “I see players as fully paid, games that are easily streamable on, say, a channel like Peacock. I see us having the same momentum that the NWSL is having. And I see players not having to choose between work and rugby, and that rugby can be a viable career for players coming out of college.
“… I see Colorado being a leader in that effort. We’ve had such a history and a strong community around rugby, so in my crystal ball, the (Denver WER) team has won another three national titles in the next five years.”
WER is set to launch in the spring, with Denver one of six founding markets along with Boston, Chicago, New York, the Bay Area and the Twin Cities. Like Denver, those markets have established WPL teams.
The new league will replace the WPL, which requires players to pay their own dues and travel. That can rack up the annual financial investment to around $4,000 per player, Weigel estimates. Details on the Gray Wolves’ new name in the WER and where they will play are still being finalized, as are rosters, though Weigel says Colorado’s club is likely to consist of many of the same players.
Burke said the league is “still very much an active start-up.” While she and Weigel believe that WER is capable of taking women’s rugby in the U.S. to the next level, that may have to occur at a slow pace.
Players won’t be getting paid salaries, stipends or performance bonuses in the first year of the league. And where exactly funding will come from has not been revealed publicly. (Anonymous investors, private donations and yet-to-be-announced corporate sponsors are expected to be among the league’s initial backers.)
“What players expect there to be is the foundational support that starts to move us away from a pay-to-play league into a play-to-succeed league,” Weigel said. “What we can see that in 2025 hopefully looking like is all flights and travel paid for by the league. All hotels, rental cars, meals on the road paid for. As well as starting to build out the front office for the league, like Jamie Burke’s new role, and team managers and head coaches being paid for by the league. So those structural pieces will start to be there as we continue to work on securing more funding and investors.”
Weigel says WER is determined to learn from the missteps on the men’s side of the professionalization of the sport in the U.S.
PRO Rugby launched in 2016 as the first American professional rugby union but lasted less than a year before folding. In its wake, Major League Rugby debuted in 2017, and that organization has also faced adversity, with two teams folding after the 2023 season.
Like MLR, WER will operate in a single-entity structure with each team owned by the league. Though there is optimism that the jump from an amateur to a professional model will pay off, there are also still a lot of unknowns. There’s also the fact that WER must compete for top-tier American players with England’s league, Premiership Women’s Rugby, which offers contracts with salaries.
“I do get a little bit nervous with the fact they’re going to get rid of the WPL, which has been decently established, and start this new entity where there’s still a lot of ambiguity, and things aren’t totally clear,” said Gray Wolves veteran Julie Tordonato, who has played for the club since 2013.
“I’m optimistic and hoping for the best … because the more we can eliminate these hurdles of pay-to-play and pay-to-travel, the more opportunities for younger players and the better the competition will be. But for elite Americans who can play in the Premiership, they’ve been doing so well over there, they get paid, so why would they come back? I think it’ll be a few years before the WER could offer the kind of salaries they offer in England.”
Whatever happens, the Gray Wolves are used to uncertainty, and the club’s prepared to navigate the potential speedbumps that come it.
After all, the club’s funding was cut by the city of Glendale following the 2019 season, when they won the WPL title as the Merlins. Then they lost two seasons when the WPL was shut down in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
“When we won in 2019 and they cut the team fully, it was pretty devastating, for sure. It was a huge blow,” Tordonato said. “But it also speaks to the resilience of these women that we didn’t fold. It’s impressive that we continued to bind together and win. There’s been a lot of things that happened where we could’ve just given up the club.”
The club elected to go the independent route. While Glendale continued to provide an annual donation to the team and allowed the Gray Wolves to rent Infinity Park for a discounted rate for practice and matches, the city’s backing — which once drew many nationally elite players such as Burke to Colorado — was over.
Despite that, on the pitch, the Gray Wolves haven’t missed a beat. They placed third in the WPL in 2022 before reeling off back-to-back titles over the next two years, both over the Berkeley All Blues. Behind the leadership of Burke, the most capped woman in USA Rugby’s history, the team has continued to add national team players as well as promising up-and-comers.
Colorado had five Women’s Eagles on the roster for the Legacy Cup win, plus a local 17-year-old phenom in Tahna Wilfley, a Kent Denver senior who was the youngest player in the WPL this season.
“We’ve had consistent leadership from Jamie as well as (fellow longtime coach) Mose Timoteo,” said Rachel Ehrecke, a national team member who has played for Colorado since moving to the state for rugby in 2018. “That’s really helped us continue after leaving the Merlins name. Along with having a lot of veteran players that go back with this club a long time, we’ve had continued leadership up top as well as on-field leadership that’s helped us recruit elite players and bring up new players to elevate our team.”
For Ehrecke and Wilfley, the inherent risk that comes with the launch of WER is worth it for the chance to grow the sport’s visibility. That Colorado also gets to be a part of it is only fitting.
In addition to boasting a thriving women’s rugby market that also features the Black Ice Women’s Rugby Football Club, Colorado is also home to the men’s American Raptors, who play at Infinity Park as part of the transcontinental Super Rugby Americas league, and a robust grassroots scene.
“My main goal (in the immediate future) is to help establish the WER,” Wilfley said. “I know I’ll make my footprint on this sport and leave my mark at some point in my life, but at this moment, I’m really looking to the leaders of the Gray Wolves (and whatever WER team I’m on) to see how I can learn and grow from them.
“Growing up here and watching women’s rugby evolve, it’s so inspiring to young girls in the sport. The more we grow, and with the next phase of the WER, Colorado is a state to watch out for. It has a long, and strong, path to go down as we move forward.”
