10 JUNE 12-18, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | character and how you conduct yourself off the fi eld,” he adds. “If you go on to be a nurse or a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or you work anywhere, how you conduct yourself is going to be how people remember you.” Right now, kids in Colorado have plenty of ways to learn those life lessons, especially through emerging leagues like Women’s Elite Rugby or the Western Ultimate League where, despite being paid to play, all the athletes have day jobs. The WER is in its fi rst season right now and the Denver Onyx is already dominating with just one loss and a lock for the champi- onship. On that team, athletes serve in the Air Force, fi ght fi res and work in hospitals, among other things. Nick Donnelly, senior general manager of the Onyx, calls Denver the “heart of rugby in the United States.” “Looking back at my playing career, whenever we came to the U.S. or when we played American teams wherever we were in the world, what stood out the most were the teams from Colorado,” he says. “There was always a little bit extra in the tank. It might be due to the altitude or just for the love of the game, but they always had a little bit more to give, and you could tell very quickly that they were from Colorado.” During the 2024 Olympics, breakout U.S. women’s rugby star Ilona Maher led the sev- ens team to a bronze medal — the fi rst United States medal in the event — before launching a world tour that included becoming a fi nalist on Dancing With the Stars. “Because of players like herself and her teammates, there’s a real opportunity to inte- grate this sport as a main sport in the United States, rather than just a foreign sport,” Donnelly says. “It’s great to see that there is a growing interest in the sport. Thankfully, Colorado is very aware of rugby as a whole and has embraced the Onyx.” Infinity Park in Glendale, which is where the Onxy plays, is owned and operated by the City of Glendale; it’s part of what makes rugby in Denver great, Donnelly suggests, because it was designed for rugby and has a grass fi eld rather than turf. According to Donnelly, all of the league’s goals for its fi rst season have been exceeded, es- pecially in terms of attendance in Colorado. The women’s version of the game is as hard-hitting and com- petitive as the men’s, he says: “There’s hard hits, there’s fast pace and it’s a team sport.” He believes Denver will con- tinue to be a strong market for WER as more people recog- nize the excitement of the game. And he isn’t alone in his faith in Denver as a women’s rugby market. Johnston says that he plans to work with Glendale on a bid to host the 2031 Men’s Rugby World Cup and the 2033 Women’s Rugby World Cup, both of which are slated for the United States. Though the sport has a smaller following, Ultimate Frisbee has found a home in Colorado with both a men’s and women’s professional team; the Colorado Alpenglow is the fi rst pro women’s sports team in the state, having started play in 2023. Betsy Basch, a founding player who now manages the team, says that many people have learned about profes- sional Ultimate and become fans of the Alpenglow just in that short time. And even be- fore applying to be part of the league, founders sent out a sur- vey asking residents of metro Denver how they felt about a women’s pro ultimate team; they expected forty replies and got nearly 400. “Their response was over- whelming, 92 percent of our community wanted this team and wanted to support this team,” Basch recalls. The team has partnerships with many youth organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club, and hopes to decrease the cost of playing sports so that more kids can participate. The Alpenglow would also like to see more women’s sports in the area. “Con- tinuing to maintain the idea of celebrating all athletes and that we’re actually not in com- petition with each other, that there’s room for all of us, will be an incredibly important future piece,” Basch says. Johnston agrees. Building on the current momentum, he sees the potential for an even bigger boom in women’s sports. Bringing a Women’s National Basketball Association team to the city is still one of his goals. “This is going to be a great market for women’s sports,” Johnston says. “We would love to make sure this is just the beginning of women’s sports franchises.” When the Professional Women’s Hockey League played an exhibition game in Denver in January, fans showed up in record num- bers; 14,000 attended the event at Ball Arena. For Jennifer Anderson-Ehrlich, it was moving to hear all those fans chant that they wanted a team. Anderson-Ehrlich is the executive director of Sportswomen of Colorado, an organization that works to promote, honor and empower women’s athletics in the state. “Finally, people are feeling like women and girls are getting their roses,” she says. One place where women and girls al- ways get their roses is the 99ers, which opened on East Colfax Avenue in December. The owners hosted events sur- rounding the PWHL match and have already had a cel- ebration for the NWSL team. Each day, women’s sports play on the bar’s TVs. “They are an example of seeing the momentum of a real, increased fan base, an in- creased appetite to watch and cheer on and be a part of wom- en’s professional sports,” says Johnston, who did a stint as a guest bartender at the 99ers. The momentum for wom- en’s sports is increasing not just in Colorado, but around the nation. When Anderson- Ehrlich’s organization started in 1974, it was the fi rst group in the country dedicated to honoring female athletes. The advent of Title IX in 1972, en- suring equality between sexes in college athletics, helped pro- pel the movement; high-level female athletes could now play beyond their youth. “While we’ve made great leaps, there’s still lots of barri- ers that exist: cost, transporta- tion, additional opportunities,” Anderson-Ehrlich says. “Even now, gaining visibility for some of our athletes who are doing re- ally stellar things is challenging.” Even the terrible Colorado Rockies will make headlines over girls’ high school athletics, even if those athletes take home high honors, Anderson-Ehrlich points out. Sienna Betts, sister of UCLA women’s basketball standout Lauren Betts and the number two -ranked prospect in the country, won Gatorade Player of the Year at Grandview High School this year, but re- ceived little notice in the media. The historic challenge for women’s sports, according to Millet, is that the lack of invest- ment led to a lack of attention that then became a justifi cation for the lack of investment. “We’ve sort of said, ‘Oh, well, people aren’t that interested in it,’ so it doesn’t get the dollars to attract major talent. It doesn’t get the visibility that other sports get in terms of prime placement and broadcasts,” Millet adds. “That’s been a little bit mythbusted over the last three or four years as you’ve looked at what’s happened within the WNBA and even women’s college basketball.” Both levels of the sport enjoyed a massive infl ux of support over the last three seasons as stars like A’ja Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueck- ers moved their games from college to the WNBA. Their star power raised both the fan base and fi nancial value; the New York Liberty’s recent valuation of $450 million is thirty times the team’s value in 2019. On the soccer side, the NWSL earned a landmark broadcast deal in 2023, partnering with CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps Sports to distribute games nation- ally over the next four years, which has led to more exposure for the league. Denver NWSL is also investing a record $110 million to bring the team to the league. “If you invest in the sport, if you invest in athletes and the experience around the sport, fans will come,” Millet says. “It’s not even that fans are going to come because they want to support women. They’re go- ing to come because they’re getting value out of the experience. That has been a game changer over the last probably three or four years for women’s sports.” The media is fi nally catching on as well, Angeli says. “Social media probably helps, too, because you see companies individually invest in athletes and see more of female ath- letes’ personalities and people can identify with that,” she explains. “We’ve done a lot better job of being able to show that it’s worth the investment. We have all those things, we just haven’t been able to display them to the audience in the past. We have now.” Though media companies and private inves- tors are investing The Ball’s in Her Court continued from page 8 Jordan Nytes and other young athletes can now dream of staying home to play professional sports. Jordan Nytes is a goalie at the University of Colorado. UNIVERSIT Y OF COLORADO ATHLETICS UNIVERSIT Y OF COLORADO ATHLETICS continued on page 12
