College rugby in the United States and beyond has grown faster than most programs' budgets, staffing, or coaching depth can keep up with. To close that gap, a growing number of university programs are looking outside their own conference, and outside their own country, for it. Partnerships with elite international rugby organizations, most visibly with Super Rugby franchises like the Crusaders, have become a real lever for program development. Here's how that's actually playing out.
Why Programs Are Looking Abroad
Most US college rugby programs are still built on volunteer coaching, thin budgets, and a playing population that picked up the sport far later than their counterparts in traditional rugby nations. That's a structural gap, not a talent problem, and it's hard to close from inside a single conference or country.
New Zealand offers something most programs can't build for themselves overnight: a fully professional environment with a documented, repeatable coaching system behind it. That's the pitch behind partnerships like the one between Next Phase Rugby and Crusaders Global Academy, announced as part of a shared mission to grow and strengthen rugby in the United States by investing in the long-term development of American players, coaches, clubs, and rugby organizations.
The Growth Partnership Model
Rather than a one-off camp or a single guest coaching visit, the model several universities have adopted is a standing, multi-year relationship. Crusaders Global Academy's Growth Program, for example, is structured as an annual partnership: two high-performance coaches travel to a partner's own facility for three to five days each year, covering player development, coach development, community activation, and fundraising events, backed up year-round by remote leadership roundtables, a post-season review, and one-on-one coach connection sessions.
That structure matters for program development specifically because it isn't a single injection of expertise. It's a recurring touchpoint that a university's own coaching staff can build a season around, year after year. Universities that have gone through the program include Stanford (men's and women's), Miami University of Ohio (men's), Thomas More University (men's), and Arkansas State (men's). (Crusaders Global Academy)
Case Study: Player Development Through Residency
Stanford's women's program has taken the individual-player route as well as the team-wide one. When Stanford Director of Rugby Rich Ashfield suggested that player Vivian Studdert take part in the Crusaders Global Player Residency in New Zealand, her first reaction was essentially disbelief that she'd be a fit.
Studdert, relatively new to rugby compared to teammates in New Zealand who had been playing for years, described every day as a steep learning curve, at one point saying she felt like she "got her butt kicked every day." But she pushed through it rather than letting the skill gap stop her from trying things, and came away from the residency having taken what she called a massive leap forward in her game. For a university program, that's the real value of a residency placement: it compresses years of development into a single immersive stint, using a level of competition the player's home program may not be able to offer on its own.
Case Study: Coach Development Pays It Forward
International partnerships don't just build better players, they build better coaches, and that impact tends to outlast any one season. Miami University of Ohio head coach Killian Mulkern attended the Crusaders Global Coaching Course in Christchurch in 2025, and his team went on to have arguably the best season of any Men's D2 college program that didn't make the playoffs, missing out only on conference tiebreakers rather than performance.
Mulkern said the course validated a lot of what his program was already doing at home while adding a new tool: learning to break individual skills down step by step, from a professional coaching staff, rather than only coaching to the broad picture. That's a specific, transferable technique a college program can fold straight into its own training sessions the following week, not just a motivational boost.
Beyond One Franchise: Recruiting Platforms and Onsite Academies
International partnerships aren't limited to a single training model, and programs are combining several types at once. On the recruiting side, Next Phase Rugby, the leading online rugby recruiting platform connecting high school athletes with collegiate rugby programs across the US and abroad, now works directly with Crusaders Global Academy so that American players and coaches can access player residencies, coaching immersions, remote leadership and coach development, and rugby culture education through one relationship rather than several separate ones.
Other universities have gone further and built a dedicated onsite program rather than sending players and coaches overseas periodically. The University of Wollongong in Australia launched its own Crusaders-run academy, the UOW Crusaders Global Rugby Program, where enrolled students train inside a rugby academy managed by Crusaders staff for around 20 hours a week while completing their degree, an approach UOW leadership described as unique, with nothing else like it in the world. (UOW)
What This Means for Program Development
Across these examples, a few common threads stand out for any program thinking about going this route:
- It works best as a relationship, not an event. The programs seeing the most benefit, like Stanford, Miami of Ohio, Thomas More, and Arkansas State, are in multi-year Growth Partnerships, not one-off camps.
- Player and coach development reinforce each other. A single well-trained coach who attends a course brings techniques back to an entire roster; a single player residency changes what one athlete believes is possible, and that mindset spreads through a team.
- Recruiting and development are increasingly linked. Platforms like Next Phase Rugby show that where a recruit goes to college and what development opportunities they'll get once they're there are now part of the same conversation.
- The commitment level scales. Options run from a single online coaching course, to an annual onsite Growth Partnership, all the way up to UOW's model of a fully integrated academy on campus, so a program can start small and grow the relationship over time.
Thinking about an international partnership for your program?
Crusaders Global Academy works with university programs at every stage, from a first coaching course to a standing annual Growth Partnership. Explore CGA's Growth Program and see what a partnership could look like for your team.
Sources
- Crusaders Global Academy — Growth Program
- Goff Rugby Report — Next Phase Rugby and Crusaders Global Academy Partnership
- Goff Rugby Report — Crusaders Player Residency Helps Studdert
- Goff Rugby Report — Crusaders Coaching Course
- University of Wollongong — UOW Crusaders Global Rugby Program Head Coach Named
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