‘Set up to fail’: Women’s rugby team faces recruitment problems as new head coach announced

Following a tumultuous fall season for the women’s rugby team, their future competitiveness at the varsity level remains uncertain. This spring, the team lost most Division I varsity matches by a wide margin and won several games against club and Division II teams in the two 7s tournaments.

“Name me an athlete you can think of right now at your institution that you know that would say, ‘I’m going to come here to play varsity athletics in order to play club teams,’” Becky Carlson, head coach for the women’s rugby team at Quinnipiac University, said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “I can’t think of any.”

Carlson has been coaching the Quinnipiac team for 15 years, and headed the Emerging Sports Program with USA Rugby, lobbying for the addition of women’s rugby as a varsity sport to NCAA universities. Two weeks ago, the Quinnipiac athletics department announced that it would end the varsity status of the women’s rugby team, which has won three national championships. 

Princeton’s Department of Athletics did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The women’s rugby team played their first season in varsity status in Fall 2022 after ascending from the club level. In their first two seasons, they were unable to secure a win. During their Fall 2024 season, they earned two victories but have since struggled to put another win in the books. 

“In order to be able to keep up with those teams, [roster support] has to be equal or better,” Carlson said. “You have to build your roster, you have to have experienced players.”

Over their first three seasons as a varsity team, women’s rugby was awarded three recruitment spots per year. While this number is on par with peer schools like Harvard and Brown, programs at those schools converted to varsity status over 10 years ago. Last fall, all other Ivy League teams with Division I varsity programs had at least double the number of players with extensive pre-college experience on their teams than Princeton. 

“We got away with [an all walk-on team] at Quinnipiac when it was 2010 … the landscape at that time was much different,” Carlson said. “The game has evolved for women’s rugby, this isn’t 10, 15 years ago.”

“In any sport, the process of building a varsity program from the ground up is a long one,” Chas Dorman, Associate Director of Athletics for Communications, wrote to the ‘Prince’ last semester in response to questions for previous reporting. “However, we remain as committed as ever to the long-term success of the women’s rugby program and to the positive experience of the student-athletes who are members of the team.”

The women’s rugby team relies on walk-on athletes to be able to compete in fall season matches, where 15 players are on the field at a time. 

“That’s not to say you can’t find gems within walk-ons, but it can’t be the majority of your squad,” Carlson said. 

According to two individuals familiar with the matter, there were a number of high school rugby players with strong interest in committing to the application process at the University last fall. In the past year, many of these potential recruits lost interest in Princeton, with several committing to other Ivy League schools. 

The team will now only be filling two of their four recruitment spots for this coming fall season, the individuals say. 

Carlson remembers speaking with former Princeton Head Coach Josie Ziluca after the first varsity match between Quinnipiac and the Tigers in 2022. 

“I even said to her after the game, ‘You’re gonna need more than this. It’s great for the first year, but you’re gonna need more than this to keep up. This isn’t sustainable.’”

Two sources familiar with the matter have said that alumni have been told that they should not expect any increase in recruitment spots for the team, and that unconventional methods will need to be used to fill out the roster. 

On Tuesday, the athletics department announced that Karameli Fa’ae’e would become the next head coach of the team.

Fa’ae’e did not respond to a request for comment. 

“It doesn’t matter who Princeton hires, if they're still in the same situation. There has to be institutional buy-in to be able to offer the proper resources to be able to be competitive, and that comes with having more than four kids on the roster that know what they’re doing,” Carlson said prior to the announcement.  

The Princeton Athletics website has touted wins in the spring season, with tournament summaries that do not state if an opposing team is Division I, Division II, or club. Many of these wins have been against Division II and club teams. 

“I don’t think people are reading these articles and understanding that this was a different level of play,” Carlson said. 

“The celebration of that, knowing full well, from an institutional standpoint, what the status of that competition is, is a little bit disingenuous,” she added.

The Athletics Department previously pointed towards the new rugby facilities in Meadows as evidence of their support for the team.

“The brand-new training and competition facilities at Meadows provided for the team are just one example of the University’s continued investment in the program and its long-term success,” Dorman wrote. 

Carlson argued that facilities alone will not bring success to the team. 

“You could turn around and say, well, they have a really nice field, and there is a locker room, and there’s a brand new complex … But if you get to Saturday and you’re playing as a recruited athlete next to people that haven’t had the ball in their hands as long as you have, that’s a different experience.”

If the recruitment spot allocations for the sport don’t change, according to Carlson, “then you’re essentially creating a club program with a few extra resources.”

Devon Rudolph is the head Podcast editor and a senior News writer. She is from Fairfax, Va. She can be reached at devonr[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

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