Did You Know? The Seattle Seabyrds Women's Rugby Football Club

When we sat down to plan 60 Years of Rugby in Seattle, we thought we knew our history. Three clubs, one story: Seattle RFC, Old Puget Sound Beach, and the Puget Sound Breakers.

Then someone in the room said a name none of us had heard before. Not our President. Not our longest-serving members. Nobody.

The Seattle Seabyrds Women's Rugby Football Club.

Did you know?

Long before most of today's players were born, the Seabyrds were playing women's rugby in Seattle. They weren't a founding club of Seattle Rugby Club, and they aren't part of our official lineage. But they played here, on the same fields, in the same city. And they lined up against the Breakers, the women's club that would go on to join Seattle Rugby Club in 1997.

That makes them part of rugby in Seattle. And that makes their story worth telling.

The photo at the top of this page is one of the few records we've seen. The Seabyrds and their opponents crowd together after a match, sitting and standing in their hooped jerseys, one player with a boombox at her feet. It's the kind of photo every rugby club has somewhere: two teams who just spent eighty minutes hitting each other, now shoulder to shoulder.

Women who didn't wait for permission

It helps to remember how new women's rugby was when the Seabyrds took the field.

• 1972. Title IX passed, and that fall Colorado and Colorado State played what's recognized as the first women's rugby game in the United States.
• 1974 to 1979. Women's teams grew from about 29 across the country to more than 200.
• 1978. The first women's national invitational championship was held.
• 1980. The Pacific Northwest formed its own Women's Union, the fourth in the country.
• 1987. The first official USA Women's National Team played its debut match, in Victoria, just across the water from Seattle.

Clubs like the Seabyrds built that growth. Nobody handed them a pathway, a league, or a budget. They found a field, found each other, and found a way to get to the next game, often by piling into cars and driving across the state.

The second photo carries the caption Road Trip Across Washington: nine Seabyrds, a highway rest stop and a lot of laughing. If you've ever been on a rugby road trip, you already know this photo. The hair and the jeans have changed. Nothing else has.

You can find the national story of those early years at the US Women's Rugby Foundation history museum.

Welcomed home at sixty

On May 30, 2026, the Seabyrds were with us at the Washington Athletic Club for 60 Years of Rugby in Seattle. It was one of the most special parts of a special night. A club most of the room had never heard of turned out to be sitting right there among us, part of the same story all along.

We're proud that the Seabyrds are part of rugby's history in greater Seattle, and we don't want their name to be forgotten again.

One club, men and women, side by side

Women's rugby has come a long way since the Seabyrds. The women's game is one of the fastest-growing parts of the sport, and more girls and women are picking up a rugby ball now than ever.

At Seattle Rugby Club, the women's game isn't a separate program running alongside the "real" club. It is the club. Our Men's XV and Women's XV play under one name, one crest, one board and one budget. They share volunteers, sponsors, supporters and sidelines. Not every club in American rugby works this way, and we think it's one of the most special things about this place.

Our Women's XV competes in the BC Rugby Premier League and USA Club Rugby, and qualified for the Pacific Regionals this past season. Every one of them stands on ground that clubs like the Seabyrds broke first.

Help us tell the rest of the story

We know how little we know. If you played for the Seabyrds, played against them, coached them, or have photos, results or old programs sitting in a box somewhere, we'd love to hear from you. We want to document the Seabyrds' history properly, here on seattle.rugby, so the next generation of Seattle rugby players knows whose shoulders they're standing on.

Get in touch with Club President Kevin Flynn at kevinf@seattle.rugby.

Never above you. Never below you. Always by your side.