Women's Rugby Remembers Radcliffe Roots

A rugby pitch, two teams, and a scrum locked up just meters away from the try line underneath the roar of a raucous crowd.

In a scene drawn straight from the 1982 Ivy League men’s rugby championship, the fans cheer on the Harvard men’s rugby team as the scrum engages and the ball is thrown. One group, though, does more than just watch: the women of Radcliffe cheer from the sideline and, at the same time, wonder if they can’t play in a league of their own.

The Crimson men would go on to defeat Yale in the finals, 33-12, capturing the 1982 Ivy League championship, but, along the way, they also played a role in sparking the creation of a women’s team. Indeed, the Harvard Radcliffe Rugby Football Club (HRRFC) was born later that year.

“We started hearing comments from some of the men’s rugby players saying that ‘you guys should stop watching and start playing,’” said Jeanne Reid, ’84, a member of the original Radcliffe club. “And so we did.”

The fledgling group didn’t face pleasant odds: women hardly played rugby, and there were very few women’s clubs back then. Questions remained, but the women of Radcliffe Rugby didn’t create the club just to see it fall apart. Instead, the women from Radcliffe used the glue of camaraderie and the catalyst of determination to transform it into a thriving club still very much alive and kicking today.

“It was a nice combination of a very strong team with very good athletes, and people who were there to have fun,” Reid said. “We had a lot of fun together, and so the sport was very much both an athletic endeavor as well as a social one.”

In addition to creating strong friendships and bonds, the team didn’t forget what they had set out to do on the pitch: the women from Radcliffe were relentless. They woke early, practiced in the mud, washed their own uniforms, fundraised, and pushed themselves in intense training sessions to become fit and game-ready, day in and day out.

“All those kinds of things—they just kept going and kept fighting for what they loved, despite the fact that they didn’t have any support from the school,” said senior Hope Schwartz, the current captain of the women’s rugby team. “And it was because they loved their sport and they loved each other.”

Reid remembers the adversity providing an incentive for the new club as it rose to prominence in a novel sport.

“I think we felt pretty excited to be part of the beginnings of the sport for women,” she said. “It was very young then, and it was fun to be part of that—and the name Radcliffe emphasized the fact that we were a women’s rugby team, and there weren’t a lot of us back then. There was also some pressure then to show that we could do it. Our coaches pushed us to see if we could in terms of the fitness, maybe a little too hard, but needless to say, we weren’t going to give up.”

Starting anything from scratch is simply difficult. However, with the determined and supportive group of women that it brought together, the Radcliffe rugby club used its familial bonds to overcome the obstacles set before it.

“There was a lot of camaraderie there because we were trying to do something that was hard,” Reid said. “We’re still very good friends.”

As a testament to the strength of the multi-faceted foundation that its founders laid, the Radcliffe rugby club captured its first Collegiate National Championship in 1998 and, in 2013, went varsity— more than 30 years after its initial creation.

Immediately following the triumphant 1998 season, on October 1, 1999, Radcliffe College ceased to exist in name, absorbed into Harvard after a long merger period that began in 1977. Even after going varsity three years ago the Radcliffe Rugby team kept the name—the legacy of Radcliffe is one that the today’s teams don’t forget.

“We still use Radcliffe in our cheers and we still use Radcliffe on our apparel because of the legacy of the women who built this team from the ground up,” Schwartz said. “They built this team with their own hands without a lot of support—really anyone else except for themselves. It’s the legacy of humility and self-sufficiency, and just hard work, dedication, and care. That’s something we really want to keep alive on the team.”

The women of Radcliffe lived up to the legacy in their inaugural varsity season, going 5-1 in Ivy League play and capturing the Ivy League title.

Today, the Harvard women’s rugby team both recruits players out of high school and accepts walk-ons, reflecting both its open, welcoming atmosphere and its commitment to on-field success. Either way, the veterans of the team are always sure to continue the legacy and traditions of the generations of teams prior.

“Some of the social traditions from the club team we still do,” Schwartz said. “[It’s] not just [about] the name, but the culture that it represents. We still try—especially the older girls on the team—to keep the conversations going about why it’s so important to keep thinking about Radcliffe and why it’s important to pass down to the underclassmen girls who play to explain what it means to them.”

And ultimately, Radcliffe may mean different things to different players, but the culture of the team boils down to one thing: the bonds that the club creates.

“For me personally, Radcliffe means family, the kind of family will fight until the bitter end for,” Schwartz said. “Every single person who’s a member of the organization will have each other’s back, even if we’re the only people who have each other’s back, even in the face of literally anything.”

As the fall 2015 season draws to a close, and the old guard will once again pass the torch, Reid said she’s impressed with how well the Radcliffe name has deservedly held up.

“It shows the connection to where we started,” she said. “It’s nice to know that the tradition is living on, and that women today at Harvard are playing, playing well, enjoying it, and are kind of honoring the connection to where the team started.”

The Harvard women’s rugby team shines on as a permanent reminder of how it began: the culture, the mindset, and the family that epitomized the women of Radcliffe athletics.