Vanessa Marsh was named head coach of the Notre Dame College women's rugby program in June 2023.
Marsh has been a part of the rugby community for more than two decades, first as a player and more recently as a coach. She comes to NDC after a successful stint at Baldwin Wallace University. In the 2022-23 season, BW won the Ohio Valley Conference title and Marsh was named Conference Coach of the Year. She also led the Ohio Valley Conference All-Star team in Texas to their best finish ever in January 2023, and helped coach the Ohio Elite U23 team at the Coaches Challenge LAU Tournament in May 2023.
Her coaching career began in 2017 with the Brunswick Valkyries. The Valkyries put together a three-peat in 7s from 2017-19 and won back-to-back 15s state titles in 2021 and 2022. But, she says the greatest accomplishment was having more than twenty players go on to play collegiate rugby.
Marsh first discovered rugby while in New Zealand, and then began her playing career when she came back to the United States. Initially playing for several teams in the northeast for over a dozen years, Marsh eventually moved to the midwest and continued her career in Cleveland.
She helped start the Cleveland Rugby Coalition while playing with the Midwest Thunderbirds in 2019, before retiring as a player to focus more time on coaching.
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