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Since their debut at Infinity Park on March 29, the Denver Onyx have quickly proved to be a powerhouse in Women’s Elite Rugby (WER), a six-team startup league attempting to professionalize women’s rugby in the U.S. In each of their first three games, the Denver squad blew the competition away, winning by more than 50 points in home games at Infinity Park. As the season progressed, those margins tightened, but until last weekend, the Onyx were undefeated.
On Sunday, June 1, the Onyx—whose name pays tribute to rose onyx, a pink gemstone found only in Colorado—played the eighth of their ten regular season games. It was their second match against the New York Exiles, a team they beat handily at the beginning of the season, 62-7. This time, the game took a different turn.
For two 40-minute halves, the Onyx battled the Exiles at the Stadium at Memorial Field in Mount Vernon, New York. The Onyx, decked out in hot-pink jerseys and black shorts, scored the first two tries (the rugby equivalent of a touchdown); in the first half, the Exiles scored once. In the second half, though, the Exiles scored three in a row. It wasn’t until the 65th minute that the Onyx managed to score its only second-half, and the rest of the game was a dead heat where neither team scored.
The loss was a bitter defeat for the Onyx, ending the team’s winning streak in the WER’s inaugural season, while also demonstrating the competitiveness of the league.
The WER took over the Women’s Premier League (WPL) last year with a vision of converting the club-style model into a professional organization. Capitalizing on the fresh visibility brought to women’s rugby by Team USA’s bronze medal at the Paris Olympics, the league is seeking to develop the sport in the U.S. and bring high-level competition to fans who may be watching for the first time. The WER pays coaches and covers the cost of travel and gear for teams, but does not yet pay players.
If anyone questioned whether Denverites are interested in watching women’s rugby, the Onyx’s first game left no doubt. The kickoff match was one of the highest attended in Infinity Park history. About 2,200 fans turned out, surpassing attendance for men’s Major League Rugby playoffs in 2018 and more than doubling typical attendance for men’s American Raptors games in 2023 and 2024. Attendance has held strong since, which is no surprise given the team’s performance.
The Onyx’s dominance wasn’t necessarily expected, but it also wasn’t surprising. The team’s roster is stacked with athletes who play double-time with the USA Eagles—the national team that develops and sends the United States’ top rugby talent to international competitions like the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics. (None of the Onyx’s members have yet made it to the Olympics, but a handful have played in previous World Cups.) Other Onyx athletes have played together for years as part of the Colorado Gray Wolves, a club team that has existed in various iterations since 1981.
Formerly known by names such as the Harlequin Olde Girls, the Glendale Raptors, and the Glendale Merlins, the Gray Wolves were a force to be reckoned with in the former WPL. Coached by Team USA veteran and USA Rugby Hall of Fame inductee Jamie Burke, the team won five WPL national championships, including last year’s (run by the newly minted WER). Burke now serves as director of rugby for the new league.
About that same time, the Gray Wolves learned that there would be a draft for the WER teams, and many of the players decided to participate. “I think everybody declared for the draft,” says Laura LaVigne, Onyx prop, who started playing for the Gray Wolves in 2022 and recently finished her law degree at the University of Denver. “Most people have lives established here and jobs established here, so a lot of people only declared for the Onyx…. Everybody wanted a shot at it, and it was pretty competitive.”
Onyx Coach Sarah Chobot, previously coach of Glendale’s American Raptors men’s team and herself a former Gray Wolf, though she hasn’t played since 2018, spent hours watching footage of the athletes. “It was always my intent to chase the best available players,” she says, and there were many to choose from: about 375 athletes for 180 roster slots in the entire league, and only 30 roster openings (40 when counting on-call players) in Denver.
Her final active roster included 21 former Gray Wolves, seven of whom had played on the national level and two with experience playing professionally in other parts of the world. Her other picks brought new athletes to Denver, including Alessandra Bender Cruz, who plays for the Mexican national team; Monique Coffey, who plays for Canada and is easily recognizable on the field for her frohawk hairstyle; and four more Eagles, including Rachel Johnson, an American who has played professionally in Europe and who competed at the 2021 Rugby World Cup. Of WER teams, the Onyx has the greatest number of athletes who’ve been tapped to play for the Eagles. “Every single Onyx player earned their position,” says Rachel Ehrecke, Onyx lock and flanker and a former Gray Wolf who traveled with the USA Eagles this spring and watched her Denver teammates from a distance. “They are ready to put in some hard work, and they proved it.”
Having that much high-level talent on one roster, however, brought challenges. The USA Eagles spent April and May competing in the Pacific Four Series (a tournament between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S.) and other matches to help finalize their roster for the upcoming Rugby World Cup. This spring, 10 Onyx players, including heavy hitters like Maya Learned, McKenzie Hawkins, and Johnson, were called away to compete for the red, white, and blue. For two Onyx players, Erica Coulibaly and Kapoina Bailey, the Eagles’ late April match against Japan was their first time playing for the U.S.
These opportunities, while exciting for the athletes, mean the Onyx has had to shift and adjust. The starting lineup has changed over the months since the opening game. New players stepped into captain roles. Even the coach was different for a while: Chobot serves as assistant coach for the Eagles, so in April she handed the Onyx off to interim head coach Karameli Fa’ae’e, who previously coached at Brown University and the New York Rugby Club.
But these changes weren’t a surprise. “Every player on that 40-man roster was specifically chosen to do a specific job throughout the season,” says Chobot. She built the Onyx roster knowing that certain players would likely be called away for Eagles duties, and on-call players knew from the beginning that they’d actually get a shot at playing.
“We had a lot of practices with those on-call players at the very beginning of the season when the Eagles were still here, and then after they left, we still had people able to step into their shoes,” says Julie Tordonato, Onyx center, who became a captain after the Onyx’s Eagles took flight. “The results of our games have shown that it hasn’t been too much of a dropoff, which has been fantastic and speaks to the depth of our players and the depth of our bench.”
Learned, Onyx prop and lock, watched Onyx games on her phone while she was traveling with the Eagles. She was nervous at first, not sure what to expect, but: “They’ve carried on beautifully without us,” she said in early May. “They’re crushing it.”
If there’s such a thing as an easy rugby game, the Onyx hasn’t played it yet. Even in those early wins, where the final scores made the Denver team look like some sort of unconquerable leviathan, the tries took work, grit, and stamina. The competition in the WER, according to LaVigne, is higher than it was in the WPL. Hits are harder, defense is relentless, and the attacks don’t stop. “We’ve had to fight in all of these games,” LaVigne says.
In early May, the Onyx’s first game against the Twin Cities Gemini showed that competition was getting tougher. That game came at the end of a long week: The Onyx played in Boston on Sunday, returned to Denver Monday, practiced Tuesday and Wednesday, flew to Minnesota on Thursday, and faced the Gemini on Friday. With most of the athletes also working full-time jobs, energy levels were low. “It was in no way going to be a quick and easy win,” says Tordonato. “I think we all went there mentally preparing for that.”
A few minutes into the second half, the Onyx players were tired. They lacked the usual energy and force. They seemed slow compared to the Gemini. A yellow card sent the Onyx’s Gianna Solomon off the field, and the Gemini scored three tries in the next 15 minutes, including one off an interception. It wasn’t until the Onyx were back to a full team on the field that they regained control of the game. They won that game 38-19, the tightest margin they’d seen all season.
The Onyx face the Gemini again this weekend on their home turf in Glendale. The game comes after a similar long week of competition, travel, work, and training. With the Onyx no longer undefeated, it’s anyone’s game, but no matter the outcome, the Onyx will have a shot at the first WER title at the Legacy Cup on June 29, having clinched a championship berth earlier in the season.
The Denver Onyx plays one more home game this season on June 7, the team’s second match against the TC Gemini. Tickets are available online. The last away game of the regular season is on June 14; it can be watched for free on DAZN, along with the WER Legacy Cup on June 29.
