Fresh off the USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team securing a bronze medal in dramatic fashion at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, a new professional women’s rugby league is coming to the Mile High City.
The Women’s Elite Rugby (WER) league announced Wednesday that Denver is one of three cities that will host a team. (Chicago and Boston were the other cities announced for the league.)
“Denver has a lot of history in women's rugby, and recently they've had some success with the Women's Premier League and have won quite a few of the national championships,” said Jessica Hammond-Graf, president of the WER. “And so we felt like bringing that energy and the continued history of women's rugby in the area would just really make sense.”
The league was created after the Women’s Premier League (WPL), an amateur league, seated its first Board of Directors in April 2023 with the focus of developing a professional league.
WER plans to launch in 2024 with six to eight teams of 30 players competing.
“Players have been leading and organizing the entire league, and the athletes have been playing out of pocket. And so, that is really unsustainable,” Hammond-Graf said. “And so at the end of the 2022 season, the players and the leadership of the league got together and recognized that changes needed to be made.”
The WER hopes to follow a business model similar to the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) that began play last year. There are ongoing talks between WER and WPL on collaboration, but no agreement has been reached yet.
There's already a Denver women's rugby team you can support while you wait for the WER
Metro Denver is already home to one women’s rugby team, the WPL’s Colorado Gray Wolves.
The team was originally established in 1981 as the Harlequin Olde Girls. It became the Glendale Raptors/Merlins after aligning with the City of Glendale in 2007. It's been an independent club since 2012.
The Colorado Wolves are the defending national WPL champions and have won four national championships overall. The team still plays at Glendale’s Infinity Park, one of the city’s biggest assets thanks to former professional rugby player and current Mayor Mike Dunafon.
It is unclear if the WER Denver team will play at Infinity Park or another facility.
“Glendale takes pride in supporting the rugby community. As the Women’s Elite Rugby league looks to currently be in formative stages, they may intend to reach out to Glendale in the future,” Glendale Public Works cirector Josh Bertrand said in an email. “However, to my knowledge, at this time Glendale has not been contacted by the Women’s Elite Rugby League.”
Denver wants more women's teams. What will be the first sport?
If the WER successfully launches as scheduled, it would be the Mile High City’s first fully professional women’s sports team.
Denver is currently home to the semi-pro women’s tackle football team, the Mile High Blaze. The team plays in the WFA’s Pro Division and won the Women’s Football Alliance Division 2 National Championship in 2022.
As the popularity of women’s sports rises, Denver has been eyed as a destination for other professional leagues to expand to.
The WNBA recently announced that Denver is one of six cities in the running for an expansion team. The city lost out to the Bay Area for a team in 2023 and Toronto in 2024.
“We just thought with all the interest in promoting professional women's sports in Denver, starting with women's rugby, that it would be a really great market to be a part of,” Hammond-Graf said.
There has also been a push to bring a National Women’s Soccer League club to Colorado.
That effort is trading on the star power of Colorado natives Lindsay Horan, Sophia Smith, and Mallory Swanson. All three are playing for the United States Women’s National Team in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
