Rugby is taking this student-athlete from Downingtown to Dartmouth

Most athletes train their whole lives for a chance to play Division I sports.

Morgan Whelan is not like most athletes. The Downingtown STEM Academy graduate touched a rugby ball for the first time in February 2024. Thirteen months later, she committed to play rugby at Dartmouth.

Her coach, Oliver Snow, credits her talents to her desire to improve.

“She is arguably one of the most coachable players that we’ve ever had,” Snow said. “She understood what we were saying and processed it, so that if something happened where she didn’t execute it correctly, she would come back, and she already knew the answer the next time.”

Whelan says her success comes from her unwavering love for the sport.

“I specifically remember the moment I asked my coach what the possibilities were for me to play in college,” Whelan said. “I realized that I couldn’t picture my life without rugby in the future.”

That was just a few months after she joined the Downingtown Girls Rugby club. The program has a no-experience-necessary policy and accepts any high school girl who wants to play.

Whelan had experience in other sports like soccer but found that learning a new sport was a “really fun” challenge.

“Rugby always seemed really interesting to me because of its competitiveness and uniqueness,” Whelan said. “And I like to be competitive in sports.”

She thought it would be a good fit for her athletic abilities and competitive drive, so when she saw fliers for the club around her school, she decided to give it a try.

“It’s a unique sport,” Snow said. “So we take anyone we can get. There’s no need for a tryout. So if someone’s willing to try out something new, by all means, come out and try it out, because our numbers are just so small.”

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Whelan was immediately welcomed by her teammates. She says they are some of her best friends now, but she didn’t feel like the sport was coming naturally to her at first.

“When I first joined,” Whelan said, “I would literally search YouTube videos like ‘How to throw a rugby ball’ and ‘How to tackle people’ before the tournaments.

“It made me realize you can be OK with not knowing something.”

She leaned on her teammates to improve. She would line up for conditioning next to the fastest or strongest girls on her team to push herself to be the best that she could be.

“I learned rugby from my teammates,” Whelan said. “I learned so much by truly using my peers to help guide me. I would describe our team as a big family, it’s what keeps me going. They motivate me.”

When Whelan decided she wanted to play rugby collegiately, she emailed every school she was interested in, regardless of how realistic she thought playing there would be. Then, as the season continued, she began to understand that great programs were in reach.

“I kept telling her and her parents, ‘Do not sell yourself short. You could really do this,’” Snow said. “I think she started recognizing, ‘I could really do something with this. This is not just a passing fad kind of thing that you do with a bunch of friends. I could really use this to be an NCAA athlete.’”

Rugby is one of the five sports on the NCAA’s emerging sports for women list, created to “help close the participation gap between men’s and women’s sports.” The sports on the list — acrobatics and tumbling, equestrian, rugby, stunt, and triathlon — aren’t considered “championship sports” by the governing body, but the organization provides guidance to help them reach that level.

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Women’s rugby has been at Dartmouth as a club team since 1978 and attained varsity status in 2015. In the past decade, the team has made six championship appearances and won the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association championship in 2018, 2021, and 2022. The goal of NIRA is similar to that of the emerging sports for women list — to grow the sport and “attain NCAA championship status.” The Big Green won the College Rugby Association of America’s national title this season.

Additionally, the league that Downingtown Rugby plays in locally, Rugby Pennsylvania, started a “campaign to have rugby become a sanctioned high school sport for girls in Pennsylvania.” The team also competes in the Elite Girls Rugby League, created to showcase the “highest level of competitive rugby.”

In the fall of her senior year, Whelan helped lead the team to a Rugby Pennsylvania state championship and scored three tries in the semifinal. Feeling sure in her desire to play in college, Whelan sent another email to express her continued interest.

Dartmouth was intrigued. For the next four months, Whelan communicated with the program. The team sent someone to watch one of her tournaments, and, by March, she had committed to the Big Green.

“I could not be more proud of her,” Snow said. “She decided to do something, she put her mind to it, she stuck to it, she overcame obstacles, and she’s made the most of it.”

While Whelan doesn’t regret anything about her path, she believes that rugby would have benefited her earlier in her life, and she wants the sport to grow so girls can find it early on.

“I want rugby to be something that little kids and younger girls will know about,” Whelan said. “So they’re able to find a sport that they may be passionate about and they might not have even heard about if this popularity wasn’t a thing.”