‘That crazy rugby spirit’: US pro league seeks to follow Ilona Maher in raising women’s game

As vice-president of Women’s Elite Rugby, Katherine Aversano is part of a team working to launch the first US women’s professional rugby union league. On Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin, WER will stage the semi-finals of the Legacy Cup, featuring the top teams in the amateur Women’s Premier League: a showcase for talent that could grace the new operation next year.

Related: US rugby star Ilona Maher lands TV role on Dancing With the Stars

Over coffee in Washington, Aversano links WER to the growth of the US women’s game over the last 50 years. A “public historian and information specialist” for the US justice department by day, she also runs “the US Women’s Rugby History Museum, which is all about collecting our history that’s in all these wonderful old girls’ attics before somebody chucks it.

“I look at all of this as a massive build but we’re able to capitalize on the struggles that women’s sport has been going through for decades. Just how are women seen? Are we OK to see women as aggressive? And now you have rugby, and I think we’re at a pinnacle where people are clearly ready for that, mainly because it comes with the massive excitement that everybody saw in the Olympics.”

In Paris in July, Alex “Spiff” Sedrick scored the dramatic try that gave the US victory over Australia and rugby sevens bronze. Stoked by a bona fide social media star, Ilona Maher, that success resonated at home. But while US women’s sevens players are paid, 15s players must go abroad, most to England, even to play semi-pro. Setting out to change that, with a league that will be functionally semi-pro at first, Aversano and WER know every bit of attention for Maher, from late-night TV to swimsuit shoots to Dancing With the Stars, is to the good of the game.

“Her message resonates because regardless of who you are in women’s rugby, it’s about body inclusion. You’re strong, we want you to be as strong as possible. You’re fast, we want you to be as fast as possible. Be the most you can be.

“I think what people have started to get a glimmer of is the diversity of personalities there are in women’s rugby too. I love that Sammy Sullivan is getting shown for her quirkiness with Lego and also being in the military. Naya Tapper, I love that she’s this stoic, stable leader. It does show there’s just a massive spectrum of who you can be authentically inside rugby. And I think that is really attractive.”

In Madison, New York Rugby Club will face Colorado Gray Wolves and Berkeley All Blues will face Life West, both from California. The final comes a week later in Greenville, North Carolina, as WER sets out on the road to 2033, when the World Cup will be held on American soil.

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Like many Americans, Aversano found rugby at college. She is now a coach, recently with Howard University in Washington, alma mater to Kamala Harris. Maher recently endorsed Harris, a choice that made waves. But Aversano also finds herself looking away from the spotlight, towards the fields, often ill-mown or muddy, usually marked for other sports, where most American children pick up the ball and run.

“The generation coming up, it’s different. In DC and other cities we’ve got kids specializing in rugby, so that old adage of ‘reach them in high school’ doesn’t really hit as well. It’s my theory you have to have rugby as an introduction, in the whole span of sports kids are experiencing. You’ll normally have kids drop in and out, but just laying a foundational education at a young age, so they say, ‘That ball is not unfamiliar to me, I played it for a season,’ that’s OK.

“Because one of the biggest things I think we’ve not done a great job at across the board in rugby is inviting people to be fans. You know, the old adage is, ‘Oh, come play rugby.’ And then somebody goes, ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s for me.’ The conversation should not stop there.

“This is a person putting their hand out, going, ‘Hey, you guys are really awesome. You’re crazy. You’ve got a lot of personality. I want to hang with you, but just not in that particular way. Like, be a fan.’ We need fans. That’s the biggest thing. It has to get past this idea of being just that motley crew of people that plays together, to really being an entertainment product.”

Seeking fans, WER has announced its first six “markets”: Boston, New York, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Denver and the San Francisco Bay Area, echoing WPL.

“We’re building it from women who built the WPL in 2009,” Aversano says, “but the intention of the WPL was to play at a higher competitive level and over time to minimize cost. The first part happened, the second part didn’t. Not that you have to sacrifice one for the other but in a capitalist society, sometimes you do.”

As WER keeps seeking investment, “there are definitely going to be parts of the grassroots game that aren’t going to exist in the pro league. You know, you can’t show up to the pitch, smelling that fresh grass, first thing in the morning, and you’re all by yourself, the first one there. The old ‘Patch up the eye and send me back in’ mentality is not going to exist because you’re going to have medical personnel going, ‘Nope, you’re out.’

“We’re going to treat people with care, we’re going to expect a high standard of professionalism that hopefully trickles down. But we’re not telling anyone the grassroots shouldn’t exist. We need the grassroots. We need that crazy rugby spirit. My mission, personally, is to make sure everybody truly knows this isn’t new. We stand on the shoulders of giants [and] what we’re able to accomplish really does showcase the ebb and flow of when women ran things themselves, when they were supported, when they weren’t. When were they allowed to use the [national team’s] Eagles name? When weren’t they?”

Aversano has taken her women’s rugby museum on the road, staging exhibitions at tournaments and playoffs.

“Nothing in advancement of the game has been linear,” she says. “I always try to keep that in mind. People love something new, but they like to know it’s rooted in something real. Rugby has a deep tribalism. A rebellious spirit.”

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Aversano says other women’s pro leagues, including the NWSL and PWHL, have been “generous” about sharing expertise with WER, in the spirit of “high tide raises all ships”. She sees “a commonality that can overcome the lack of knowledge about rugby and keep people, get them excited, get them wanting to know.”

Related: US women took rugby bronze – creating a golden chance to grow the American game | Martin Pengelly

Inevitably, our conversation comes back to Ilona Maher.

“We talked to her folks at the beginning of the summer,” Aversano says. “We need to show people women’s rugby has market value. I can tell you she does not know much [about WER], which I think people are surprised at. But the sevens program is so isolated and focused … so we want to have conversations with her when it’s not a bother on her end.

“We’ll just keep moving the way we need to move. There are a couple athletes on the US sevens program that came from WPL, so I think they have more of a framework to get that conversation going, and then who knows which athletes will decide to try and make the World Cup squad next year.”

A few days later, Maher tells her TikTok followers she wants to make that 15s World Cup in England. If all goes to plan for WER, she’ll soon have the option of being paid to play at home.

• The Legacy Cup will be streamed live by RugbyPass.tv