USA Women

England had the better of the opening exchanges in Cardiff in 1991, but it was the Eagles who lifted the trophy at the first Women's Rugby World Cup. The team itself had barely existed as a fixed unit by then — it grew out of three college sides from 1972 and an invitation-only squad called WIVERN, which toured England and France in 1985, before the Eagles took the field for their first official international against Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, on 14 November 1987.

Canada became the rival that mattered most. The Can-Am Series turned into an annual fixture, and for its first ten years, from 1987 to 1997, the USA did not lose it once.

The 1991 final belongs to a small group of players still cited by name: Patty Jervey, who won that title and later entered the World Rugby Hall of Fame, and Kathy Flores, a champion that year who went on to coach the side herself. Phaidra Knight, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017, was named Player of the Decade for the 2000s. More recent results have been thinner — runner-up finishes in 1994 and 1998, both lost to New Zealand, a fourth-place finish in 2017, then a quarter-final exit in 2021 — and the same year brought the heaviest defeat in the team's history, an 89–0 loss to England.

The current captain, Kate Zackary, leads a squad without a settled home ground, one that turns up instead at Texas Health Mansfield Stadium, at Starfire Sports, or in Washington, DC, depending on where the fixture falls.

Against Japan in 1994, the Eagles ran in 121 points without reply.