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18 and over women's rugby team
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San Luis Obispo Rugby Football Club
20 Years of SLO Beaches
Over the past two decades, SLO Women’s Rugby has blossomed into the amazing club it is today, thanks to the passion and dedication of its founders, Lindsey Graf (White) and Amanda Waysom. We also owe a big thank you to past presidents Sara Dechance and Elena Strom, who played a vital role in bringing the club back to life on multiple occasions following times of club dormancy.
Lindsey and Amanda met at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2004 with the goal of creating a women’s rugby team in San Luis Obispo. As a part of the already established SLO and Cal Poly men’s rugby community, these founders were able to quickly find 25 women to join them on a grand adventure. In their first season, they were a tremendous success and were able to grow and develop talented players to join the SCRFU Griffins team.
The SLO Women's Rugby team, affectionately known as the Pirate Beaches, was created with the idea that having fun and fostering strong friendships among team members leads to great success on the field. This approach has not only shaped the women's team but has also positively impacted the entire SLO Rugby Club, benefiting both the men's and women's teams over the years. Each team leaning on the other for support to keep the spirit alive.
In 2013, a spark at Cal Poly began to flicker by the name of Jessica (Jessi) May. She reached out to the SLO Women’s team as a place to keep her boots warm while she fostered a relationship with the Cal Poly Men’s team as their manager in hopes to find numbers to build a women’s team. With this open communication, Jessi recruited players for the SLO Women’s team and in turn helped Cal Poly college athletes develop their rugby skills. Among those athletes were the future of SLO Women’s Rugby and a boom to the San Luis Obispo rugby community as a whole.
The growth of the Cal Poly Women’s team was led by Jessi, Liz Segars, Elena Strom, Lena Silberman, Morgan Moulis, Rylee Birdsall and Angelle Marshall (to name a few). With their experience gained during senior club rugby with SLO, they became an unstoppable force in collegiate circles. By 2018 they were officially a part of the Women's Collegiate West Coast Rugby Conference, DII.
As the Cal Poly athletes graduated, they returned to revive San Luis Obispo Women’s rugby once again. With the help and support of the San Luis Rugby Club and former president Sara Dechance as part of the SCRFU board, Elena Strom grabbed the reins to captain our beloved Pirate Beaches to a successful return in 2022.
There are many names worthy of honor and respect for growing the women’s rugby community in San Luis Obispo. Some recognizable names, such as Joanne Absher has gone on to become a successful athlete with Belmont Shore and a coach at UCLA Women’s Rugby. Samantha Lovett grew to social media fame during the 2020 pandemic and is now a part of the media crew for PR7s and World Rugby 7s. For some, SLO Beaches is a permanent home, for others it is a catapult on to a bright and successful future.