Gotham Knights RFC

The Gotham Knights Rugby Football Club is a division III men's club in the Metropolitan New York Rugby Union. Their home pitch is on Randalls Island in Manhattan. The team finished fourth in the 2012 Bingham Cup, an international gay rugby tournament, coming off a 2010 win in Minneapolis.

Gotham Knights RFC is New York's entry to the growing worldwide ranks of multiethnic and non-discriminatory rugby union teams worldwide. Following in the tradition of International Gay Rugby Association and Board teams like Kings Cross Steelers in England in 1995 and the San Francisco Fog RFC and the Washington Renegades in 2000, recent part-time New York City business owner and resident, Mark Bingham, discussed with local rugby player Scott Glaessgen how to form a New York team. Their plans were cut short on September 11, 2001, when Mark was lost in a terrorist attack on United Airlines Flight 93 over rural Pennsylvania.

The inspiration of Mark’s life, work, and dedication to the sport of rugby led Scott and other New York City rugby players to meet in late 2001 to establish Gotham Knights RFC. Practices started in December 2001 and continued in the cold, early months of 2002 under difficult pitch conditions, but within weeks the membership grew exponentially. By late February, the team had elected Toby Butterfield as its first president, a board of directors, incorporated as a New York State not-for-profit corporation, ordered equipment, decided team colors and applied for membership in the Met New York Rugby Union.

Warm spring weather in New York City led the team into more intensive practices in March and April under coach Scott Glaessgen. The team added assistant coach Mio Nitta, formerly of Tufts Rugby, as well as a steady influx of new members. Club-wide social events coalesced Gotham into a group off the field. We started intensively recruiting in the metro New York area, searching for a fan base and sponsors to sustain our team. The Knights celebrated their first win over a union opponent in September 2004 over the Suffolk Bull Moose RFC. [1]

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