It just so happens that the only Division I rugby team is Eastern.

In 1988, Eastern established a club team. In 1999, Eastern, through a long, arduous process, said Rebecca Carlson, a former Panther player and assistant coach, became the first Division I NCAA recognized team.

Today, the NCAA allows Eastern to play against club teams from schools all around the country. This helps head coach Frank Graziano put the schedule together while being the only Division I team in the country.

“As far as our home schedule goes, basically I either send out emails or pick up the phone and see who wants to play,” Graziano said. “As far as the away games, how they are scheduled, that’s basically based on our budget.”

Graziano said that he plans out a figure for the season of how much money he needs to spend on travel, where he thinks it would be exciting to play a good team or travel to a part of the country the team has never been to.

Graziano is a graduate of Clemson University and played club rugby there. Graziano said going to school at Clemson opened the window of opportunity for Clemson to play Eastern last year.

“I have great connections at Clemson,” Graziano said.

Playing Texas A&M last year at Little Rock, Ark., Graziano said, was such a wonderful experience that Little Rock has now become a home away from home.

“The Texas A&M game for example, it was a great trip down at Little Rock. We were loosely attached to a tournament down there, not really part of it, but we do use the field,” he said. “They supplied the officials for us. I made good contacts with them, we had a good experience down there, good hotels, everything was reasonable, just the same as Clemson.”

Carlson, who now works in Colorado Springs, Colo., at USA Rugby believes that rugby will continue to grow in the future; it just needs a little push in the right direction.

“Rugby is a young D-I sport,” Carlson said. “There are teams currently, six years in the making in the Northeast region, that are trying to breakthrough from club to Division I.”

Some of those teams are the University of Maine, the University of Southern Vermont, Westchester and Boden.

Carlson went on to explain that student interest is essential in order for a club team to make the leap to Division I. Many schools with club rugby teams hand out surveys to see if there could be enough interest to form a team.

But since many students come from a high school that does not have a rugby program, when they come to college, they are foreign to it.

Carlson however, is still optimistic that women’s rugby “will catch on like wildfire.”

Eastern freshmen Stephanie Militello and Erin Norton played different sports before coming to Eastern and trying out for rugby. Both players say even though the schedule has been fairly easy thus far, the schedule will get harder as the season wears on when the Panthers take on two all-star rugby teams.

Since gaining Division I status in 2002, the Panthers have only been able to play against club teams from household name schools such as the University of Wisconsin, the University of Virginia and the University of Tennessee. However, none of those schools have been able to garner enough interests from students to move from club team to Division I status.