T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA The Ohio Valley Mall honors the Wheeling University women’s rugby team which recently became the Division I 15’s National Championship by donating $10,000 to the team.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Wheeling University women’s rugby team was honored for their Division I 15’s National Championship victory on Wednesday at the Ohio Valley Mall.

The team won the 2024 National Championship in its inaugural season, going undefeated on their way to the title.

Wheeling University women’s rugby team’s head coach Ken Pape said that he is honored that the Ohio Valley Mall reached out to him to honor the team.

“This is really a chance for us to bring Wheeling University back into the fold throughout the county and that’s what we’re doing,” Pape said.

Pape has an extended history of coaching women’s rugby, before landing the job at Wheeling University he spent four years coaching at Lander University, and before that spent four years coaching at Colby Sawyer University.

On May 2, 2024, the Wheeling University Athletic Department announced the creation of the team as well as Pape as the inaugural Head Women’s Rugby Coach.

Pape is proud of his team for winning the championship and hopes to complete a back-to-back championship. He added that Jill Stewart is the only outgoing senior on the current team so he expects the team to be just as strong if not even stronger next year.

“We have an incredible recruiting class coming in and I think we have a really good shot at being in the mix and I think at the end of the season we’ll be happy with where we’re at,” he said.

Cafaro Co. Director of Communications Joe Bell surprised the team with a $10,000 check from the Cafaro Foundation to help the team offset the costs of existing.

“We have a National Champion here, who would have thought that Wheeling University would top all the other rugby teams in the nation? So it’s a wonderful thing, and we want to honor the team, and we’ll be making a donation with the team as well, and just a little something to support the program and tell them that we appreciate student-athletes like that,” Bell said. “We’re donating $10,000 from the Cafaro foundation. It’s our philanthropic arm, and we like to do this as a way of supporting them in their mission. A lot of times we have in our communities, student-athletes who are struggling, or programs that are struggling, and we like to give them a little something to maybe ease the burden of what they have and encourage them to do the same thing again.”

Pape said that the $10,000 donation came as a huge shock to him and believes the money will go to great use.

“We spent a lot of money this year, we had a lot of travel and the expenses were great,” he said. “This $10,000 really comes at an amazing time, to be able to use that money to offset expenses so that we can do bigger and better things this spring,” Pape said. “It’s honestly a level of stress taken off my shoulders because I was trying to figure out how I could nickel and dime us the rest of the way. The school’s been so supportive but at the same time we have to be self-sustainable and this $10,000 helps us get there.”

He added that he would like to thank Wheeling University President Dr. Dianna Vargo and Wheeling University Director of Athletics Carrie Hanna for allowing him to coach at the university.

“We are Wheeling’s University and to see this kind of stuff happen just proves every single day that we are where we are,” Pape said.