Women DI College Preseason Top 25

Friday Sep 4, 2009 in Amateur Competitions Division I Colleges

(New Mexico? Maybe. Alex Goff photo.)

It is difficult to create a preseason ranking in any year, as turnover and unknown new recruits change the landscape for every team.

For us at the ERugbyNews secure underground bunker, it’s even more difficult as we track the progress of the programs themselves. Simply put, we’re not hearing good news. Few programs are making giant leaps forward, while several are backsliding.

With a couple of exceptions, the best women’s DI college teams are still heavily dependant on the personality and drive of one head coach. If that person goes, or if that person loses the support of the players, you’ve got trouble.

That has happened too much in recent months. At the end of the 2008-09 season we released out final Top 25 for women’s DI, but could not in all conscience list 25 teams that deserved to be there. We listed 21. We were sorely tempted to cut this list to 20 or even 15 for the opening week.

There is just too much of a gap between the good and the not-so-good.

In the end we have listed 25, with some reservations.

Here’s how it stands: The top four are really strong and we think Army could have a breakout season this year. BYU and New Mexico, you know we like them. They have recruited well (kids are starting to realize that out-of-state tuition at New Mexico is less that in-state tuition closer to home) and despite losing some excellent seniors have a good basis of talent.

Virginia is well coached and consistent, even though they haven’t repeated the heady times of a few years ago. Eastern Illinois – readers must know we have no love for their head coach. Frank Graziano has single-handedly scuttled the push for varsity women’s rugby. He could have used his post to meet with other ADs and outline how a rugby club becomes a rugby program, but instead turned his nose up at all of it, refused to even acknowledge rugby exists outside of him, and misled his players.

We have no use for the man, but the athletes are good, he has them believing in an exciting, if predictable, way of playing, and now they are in the full DI Midwest league. So we will see.

Trouble in paradise? Well that might be Chico State (we’ll see how they handle this year) and Navy, which removed a coach that took them to a national top-four finish.

Out of the bottom eight, someone will emerge, we know. We think it might be Santa Barbara, but you might have to wait a year for that to happen.


2009-2010 ERugbyNews Women DI College Preseason Top 25
Rank         

1 Penn State

2 Stanford

3 Brown

4 Army

5 BYU

6 New Mexico

7 Virginia

8 Eastern Illinois

9 Texas A&M

10 Chico State

11 Navy

12 North Carolina

13 Vassar

14 California

15 Northern Iowa

16 Air Force

17 Oregon

18 UCLA

19 UCSB
20 Dartmouth

21 West Chester
22 Colorado
23 Clemson
24 Florida

25 Syracuse

 

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