Washington Renegades Built a Local Home for LGBTQ Rugby

The Washington Renegades’ story begins with a distinctly local foundation: the rugby union club was established in Washington, D.C., on October 24, 1998, by Mark Hertzog. Since then, its recorded history has linked the capital’s rugby community with tournaments and clubs far beyond the region.

The Renegades played their first 15-a-side match in October 1999, facing Roanoke Rugby Football Club. The following summer, the club entered a sevens tournament in London, competing against teams from London and Manchester. These early matches established an international dimension for a young Washington organization and showed the club participating in more than one form of rugby competition.

That international outlook continued in May 2001, when the Renegades hosted their first International Rugby Invitational. The event brought teams from San Francisco, Manchester and Buenos Aires to Washington. Individual players from Chicago, London and Melbourne also took part. The gathering placed the D.C. club within a broad network of players and teams connected across North America, Europe, Australia and South America.

The club’s history is also tied to organized LGBTQ rugby. The Renegades participated in the IGRAB Rugby Festival and the Mark Bingham Cup in 2002 and 2004. The Bingham Cup is named for Mark Bingham, a former University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco Fog Rugby Football Club player who died on September 11, 2001. The festival and tournament references in the club’s history situate the Renegades within the international gay rugby community, while their Washington base gives that broader network a local point of connection.

The Renegades compete in Division III and Division IV rugby union. Their record, as presented in the supplied history, is not only a list of fixtures. It traces how a club founded in Washington developed relationships with rugby organizations in other cities and countries, hosted international visitors and took part in events associated with LGBTQ rugby.

For Washington’s LGBTQ sports landscape, that combination matters. The Renegades’ documented milestones show a club using rugby as both competition and community: beginning with a local organization, expanding through international play and participating in a global sporting network. The result is a piece of D.C. LGBTQ history rooted in the field, the scrum and the relationships built across borders.

Source and reuse information This automatically generated backgrounder adapts text from “Washington Renegades RFC” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Renegades_RFC The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. The source article’s linked references are provided below where available. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.dcrugby.com/ - https://web.archive.org/web/20110524102144/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1317029241.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Aug+9,+2007&author=Jeff+Nelson&pub=The+Washington+Post&edition=&startpage=T.9&desc=Rugby+Players:+For+the+Love+of+the+Game,+and+a+Party - https://web.archive.org/web/20110524102246/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/52594873.html?dids=52594873:52594873&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=APR+13,+2000&author=Buzz+McClain&pub=The+Washington+Post&desc=Joining+in+the+Scrum%3B+On+This+Rugby+Team,+Winning+Is+the+Last+Thing&pqatl=google - https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/story/0,,946718,00.html Image rights Photograph description: 33rd Annual Adams Morgan Day Festival . 18th Street near Californa Street, NW, Washington DC . Sunday afternoon, 11 September 2011 . Elvert Barnes Photography Washington Renegades Rugby Football Club (RFC) dcrugby.com/ Exhibitors Series Visit Adams Morgan Day Festival at www.adamsmorgandayfestival.com/ Visit Elvert Barnes 33rd ADAMS MORGAN DAY FESTIVAL docu-project at elvertbarnes.com/33rdAMDF2011 Creator: Elvert Barnes. License: CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A37a.AMDF.WDC.11September2011_(6297658248).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.