our history

The concept of our rugby club was born in Fall 1972 during a tournament in Kansas City. Many wives had traveled to the tournament with their husbands who played for the St. Louis Rambler Rugby Club. When a women’s rugby team was seen playing during the tournament, the Rambler wives decided to form a team of their own. The wives were joined by girlfriends, other friends of the Ramblers as well as nurses from Jewish Hospital, and formed the Pink Ramblers. The Pink Ramblers were coached by the St. Louis Ramblers for 10 weeks, and on Sunday, April 22, 1973, the ladies played in the first women's match in St. Louis against the North St. Louis Women at the St. Louis Easter Ruggerfest Tournament.

The Pink Ramblers continued to play matches both home and away throughout 1973-1974, but found difficulty in maintaining a team as a Rambler-only side. Thus, they joined other local rugby players and other interested women and formed the St Louis Women’s Rugby Football Club in 1974-75. They chose sky blue and navy blue as the club colors, and within the first year they hosted a women’s rugby invitational tournament. In the first years, the team was coached by several members from the men’s rugby community: Don McGuire, Kokie Murphy and Keith Seaber (St. Louis Rambler Rugby Club); Terry Ford and Morris McDevitt (St. Louis Falcons); Joe Dresch (Norsemen or North St. Louis).

During the early era of STLWRFC, women’s clubs sprung up throughout the Midwest including in Carbondale, Illinois, Columbia, Springfield (MO), Springfield (IL), Chicago, Iowa City and at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  In addition to its regular matches, the St. Louis Women’s Rugby Club began entering and winning, tournaments.  Trophies began to accumulate, as did friendships and stories too numerous to recount. St. Louis first won the Ozark tournament in 1978.  They then went on to win the tournament in 1979, 1981, 1984 and 1987. 

Home matches were played in Forest Park at Langenberg Fields at this time. Marsha Birkby coached the team for many years.  Rumor has it Marsha did not allow anyone to retire while she was coaching, so the team’s numbers remained consistent in those years.

In the mid 1990’s, membership began to steadily increase and this strength allowed the club to adapt to the ever-changing structure of the senior women’s club championship format.  Practices were held at Aviation fields in Forest Park.  Coaches during this time included James Bell of the Bombers and Rick Tissell and Steve Elfrink of the Hornets.  St. Louis Women's Rugby was oftentimes a player-coached team.

In the late 1990’s Lori Brinkman transitioned from player-coach to head coach and MaryAnn Lane (MA) semi-retired and began coaching the forwards.  An informal summer 7’s program was introduced.  The first tournament the 7’s team entered was the Duck’s 7s tournament in Iowa City. Other tournaments followed with trips as far away as Pelee Island, Canada where the team was the overall tournament winner at least once and the talent show winner quite often.

In the Spring of 2004, the club added “Sabres” to its name.  Under the leadership of coaches Ed Reed and Phil Reed of the Bombers, the team advanced to the Sweet 16 round of the Women’s National Championships in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

The St. Louis Sabres Women’s Rugby Club celebrated its 30 year anniversary in 2005, and its 40th in 2015. In 2018, the Sabres went to USA Rugby Nationals once again, and made it all the way to the final before coming runner-up to Charlotte. The Sabres remained dominant on a national level for the rest of the 2010s until the Covid-19 pandemic put all rugby activities on hold.

The Sabres have been blessed to build back stronger than ever after the pandemic. After the United States won a bronze medal in 7s at the 2024 Summer Olympics, we experienced a huge influx of interest in the area both in our club and in women’s rugby in general. We regularly travel with squads of 30+ athletes, and are often able to field two competitive sides at tournaments.

Today, the Sabres remain a highly competitive team in the Midwest region. The Sabres have won the Mid-America regional playoff in 2024, 2025, and 2026. In 2025 we came runner up in the Northern Super-Regional playoff.