The women’s rugby club at Neumann has a brief but glorious history. The club lasted only six years but twice made its mark on the national stage.

Eighteen players and two coaches from the glory days – including Professor Geoffrey Karabin – gathered to recapture memories on March 21st. The reunion was held at Barnaby’s in Aston.

Karabin recalls that the club, which played a fall schedule, existed from 2014 to 2019. After posting an uneventful 4-4 record in its initial season, he describes a “meteoric rise.”

“The following season (fall 2015) we won the Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union (EPRU) Tier II division by going 7-0 in collegiate play and winning the three-match tournament by a combined score of 119-0.”

The EPRU is comprised of clubs in central and eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware. The organization was founded in 1960 and operates under the auspices of USA Rugby. It currently has 82 members.

In the club’s third full season, fall 2016, they moved up to the EPRU Tier I division where they lost in the championship match against Mount St. Mary's, 39-26.

Even with that loss, they were still one of 16 teams invited to the National Small College Rugby Championship. The Knights won their first match at that tournament and earned a spot in the Elite Eight as one of the top small college rugby programs in the country before falling in the next round to SUNY Cortland 43-24.

“I enjoyed playing rugby because it was like an adrenaline rush,” according to Alisha Wolf, a team captain. “Going out onto the field and being able to surprise yourself with tackles and see just how far we could go was an awesome feeling. Wherever I think back on college, my mind instantly goes to my team and playing the sport.”

Between their two historic seasons, the club toured Ireland in the spring of 2016, playing exhibition matches against Trinity College and Nenagh W.R.F.C. During its Irish tour, the team also enjoyed three training sessions with clubs from famed Irish cities, Dublin, Galway, and Limerick.