Penington Painting Company Sees the Part Nobody Sees

Sixty years ago this club started as a place to play rugby in Seattle. It became something harder to name — a place where people find each other, stay for decades, and keep coming back long after they stop playing.

That is the part people see: two competitive programs, a Men's XV and a Women's XV, both chasing national championships inside five years. The rest of it is the reason the club is still standing after sixty years. We call it TSPDS: The Stuff People Don't See.

Penington Painting Company sees it.

What they are standing behind

Penington is our Executive Sponsor — the top tier on our partnership sheet, and right now the only company in it. They did not arrive asking what the impressions were worth. They asked what the club stands for, and then they backed it.

This is where partnership money goes here. It is the list Penington was looking at when they said yes.

• The Growth & Sustainability Program — the club's formal reinvestment into rugby across the Pacific Northwest: youth, high schools, emerging clubs. It is the highest-impact thing we do, and we report back on where it went.
• Adopting a club or a high school — covering kit, registration, or travel for an emerging regional program. Small money, enormous consequence for a side that would otherwise fold.
• Military and veterans rugby — through USA Military Rugby, the Army Rugby Union, and the Soldiers Recovery Unit at Fort Lewis.
• The causes we stand next to — Canine Companions, Rugby Works, and others among our seventeen community partners.
• Seattle Rugby Club Day — our annual open community event, the one day a year the whole thing is out in the open for anyone who walks up.

None of that is advertising. All of it is work, and work costs money.

Why they give

We asked. The answer had nothing to do with visibility.

Penington gives because of what this club stands for and what it does in this city. They understand something not every company does: the sport needs help to keep moving. Rugby here does not run on television money. It runs on clubs, and clubs run on the people and the businesses who decide they are worth keeping.

They also understand what a club does for the people inside it. A rugby club is not just somewhere to play on Saturday. It is where people find work, find purpose, and find a room full of people who will still be there in twenty years. That longevity — someone who first walked in at twenty-two still here at fifty-five — is what Penington recognized and decided was worth backing.

Rugby clubs do not rent attention. They hand you a room full of people who chose to be there. Penington is one of the businesses that shows up for those people, and it gets shown up for in return.

Both programs, not one

Worth saying plainly: Penington's support stands behind the men's program and the women's program equally.

Our Men's XV closed the 2025–26 season as USA Club Rugby Pacific Regional Champions and National Runner-Up. Our Women's XV competes in the BC Rugby Premier League and qualified for the Pacific Regionals. Both are chasing national championships inside five years. Both wear the same name across the chest.

Year over year, not once

The number that matters is not the amount. It is the number of years.

Penington has renewed, and renewed, and renewed — through seasons that ended in silverware and seasons that did not. They backed the club's support of the USA Military Tour, and when we published the story of that work, Penington put it on their own website rather than filing it away. They carry us in their community partners section. Their own content series is called Beyond the Brush, which tells you roughly everything about how that company thinks about its work.

Care that shows up once is a gesture. Care that shows up every year is a relationship. Penington has been the second thing for a long time.

Thank you

So this is us saying it plainly, in public, where it belongs.

Thank you to Penington Painting Company, and to everyone on that team, for standing with Seattle Rugby Club — both sides of it — and for understanding what the support actually does here.

Our club motto is Never above you. Never below you. Always by your side. Penington has held up their end of that better than most.

What a partnership with the Orcas looks like

We are looking for the companies who want to stand next to them. There is room in the Executive tier, and room across our Primary and Support levels, for businesses that want in on the work rather than the banner.

Here is the whole sheet, both sides — who we are, who is already with us, and every way a partnership can actually be put to work.

Open the Partnership Sheet (PDF)

If that is your company, we would like to talk.

‌

Become a Seattle Rugby Club partner

‌