Building connections and honouring history
Kerri Heffernan is the Vice President of the US Women’s Rugby Foundation. She is also passionate about showcasing US women's rugby history through a dedicated museum.
I am a Vice President of the US Women’s Rugby Foundation (USWRF), the Director/Chair of the Women’s Rugby Coaches and Referees Association (WRCRA), and a talent ID coordinator for US Olympic Women’s 7’s (I focus on cross-over athletes).
The US Women’s Rugby Foundation was founded 20 years ago to support the Women’s National Teams.
In the past 10+ years, our role has shifted to supporting the advancement of coaches, referees, and administrators
The WRCRA is the ‘membership arm’ of the USWRF. Coaches, players, referees, admins, fans, journalists, etc can join for a modest fee and take advantage of many services.
Our primary goal is to serve as the professional home for the coaches, referees, and administrators of women’s rugby.
Each year the USWRF hosts an Annual Conference, bringing together our membership as well as others in the women’s rugby community.
It’s a tremendous, 3-day gathering with some of the biggest stars in the game.
We cover coaching topics that are technical, strategic, and ‘other’ (health, sports psych).
We also have tracks for administrators, journalists and youth coaches/admins. We have a very popular awards banquet (the Kathy Flores Lifetime Achievement Awards, picture above) and we host the pop-up USWRF museum for 3 days.
Organisations like the WRCRA provide opportunities for community building, gathering, and sustaining.
In the US, folks who work in women’s rugby can be isolated geographically so the opportunity to come together for a few days a year is very impactful.
Keeping history alive
The museum is both an online museum and a true ‘pop-up’.
The US Women’s Rugby Foundation has been building this for years. We have all the original US women’s national team jerseys, original club and college jerseys from the beginning years, trophies, posters, photos, articles, pins, t-shirts. There’s so much great stuff.
We do our best to tell the story of women’s rugby through exhibits.
The history of women’s rugby is fascinating and a part of women’s social and cultural history.
In the US, women’s rugby grew out of the women’s movement and the passage of Title IX.
When given the opportunity, women wanted to play something tough – something that reflected how they felt about the world and about themselves.
Last fall, I went to Twickenham for the England-NZ match. I visited the museum and saw Val Sullivan’s 1991 WC jersey on display, but unfortunately the name on her jersey was misattributed to someone who was not even on the US team.
Val had passed away earlier in the year so I this was a disappointment. After coming home, Val’s widow contacted me and said she would like to donate Val’s rugby memorabilia to the USWRF history project.
Among those pieces was Sue Dorington’s 1991 England jersey (she and Val had traded after the final). Val’s widow said she’d like the jersey returned to Sue.
I contacted Carol Isherwood and told her to please see about correcting the attribution in the Twickenham museum and, in exchange, we’d love to hand over Sue’s jersey to her at the 2025 World Cup Final.
Our hope is to find a nice pub the old girls can take over and toast the many years of rugby joy.
If you’re unable to sign up for regular paid subscription, you can still buy me a coffee.