Sports in Worcester, Massachusetts

The Worcester Bravehearts were founded in 2013 as the local affiliate of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. The Bravehearts played in their first season in 2014 and won the FCBL Championship by sweeping the Martha's Vineyard Sharks in a best-of-three series. In the final game, the Bravehearts made a historic victory.^[3]

In Minor League Baseball, the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, formerly the Pawtucket Red Sox, began plan in Worcester in 2021 as the Worcester Red Sox.

Football

Rugby

The Worcester Rugby Football Club (WRFC), a recognized member of the USA Rugby (USAR), currently competes in the New England Rugby Football Union (NERFU) Division 2 league. The club was founded in 1979 by Rob Anderson, Peter Coz, and Mike Minty; joined NERFU in 1980, and was invited to join USARFU Division I league after a very successful 1999 fall season. WRFC is one of the top men's rugby clubs in the U.S., having reached the 2006 Men's Division 1 Club Final Four, before losing to eventual national champion Santa Monica in a close 20-13 match.

American Football

The Worcester Sharks played at the DCU Center from 2006 to 2015 in the American Hockey League as a developmental team for the National Hockey League's San Jose Sharks. The Sharks were relocated to San Jose, California to play in the same arena as the San Jose Sharks as part of a major realignment in the AHL prior to the 2015–16 season. The Sharks replaced the Worcester IceCats after the franchise moved to Peoria, Illinois, in 2005. The Worcester Railers began play in the 2017–18 season in the ECHL.^[4] In 2018, the former Boston Blades of the Canadian Women's Hockey League moved to Worcester as the Worcester Blades playing out of the Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center. However, the entire CWHL folded in 2019.

Golf

Golf's Ryder Cup's first official tournament was played at the Worcester Country Club in 1927. The course also hosted the U.S. Open in 1925, and the U.S. Women's Open in 1960 and is the only golf course to host the trio. The captains of the inaugural Ryder Cup where two of golfs greatest legends, Ted Ray of Great Britain and Walter Hagen of the United States. The United States won, 91⁄2 to 21⁄2.

Two years before the Ryder Cup the city hosted the

Lake Quinsigamond is home to the Eastern Sprints, a premier rowing event in the United States. Competitive rowing teams first came to Lake Quinsigamond in 1857. Quinsigamond Boating Club was the first of many boating clubs on Lake Quinsigamond who are drawn to the lake's long narrow shape, ideal for racing. Soon many colleges (local, national, and international) held regattas, such as the Eastern Sprints, on the lake. Beginning in 1895, local high schools held crew races on the lake. In 1932, the lake played host to the National Olympic rowing trials.

• The
  NCAA men's basketball champions in 1947 and NIT men's basketball champions in 1954
  .
• The Holy Cross Crusaders football team played in the 1946
  Orange Bowl, losing 13–6 to Miami (FL)
  .
• Holy Cross won the 1952 NCAA College World Series, beating the University of Missouri 8–4. To date, the 1952 Crusaders remain the only college team from the Northeast to win the College World Series.
• In one of the biggest upsets in NCAA hockey history, the Holy Cross men's hockey team made history by defeating the Golden Gophers of the University of Minnesota in the first round of the 2006 NCAA Division I Tournament by the score of 4–3 in overtime.

• Holy Cross's
  Gordie Lockbaum is widely acknowledged as the last major college football program player to regularly play both offense and defense. Lockbaum finished third in the 1987 Heisman Trophy
  balloting, after finishing fifth in 1986. Lockbaum's son, Gordon Lockbaum Jr., was a star player on the 2002 Worcester Little League World Series team (See above).
• The
  Assumption College Greyhounds lay claim to being the only college baseball team to ever have two future baseball hall-of-famers (Jesse Burkett and Rube Marquard
  ) on its staff at the same time (1931–32).
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute's "WPI Engineers" football has had three undefeated, untied seasons (1938, 1954 and 1983) and two Freedom Football Conference (FFC) Championships (1992 and 1993).
• The 1965-66 WPI Engineers basketball team was defeated by
  Bobby Knight
  .
• WPI football has the distinction of being Worcester's first college football team, debuting in 1888 with back-to-back losses to
  Harvard of 70–0 and 68–0^[5]
• The Clark University Cougars earned 10 consecutive NCAA Division III tournament berths, including two finishes as national runner-up in 1984 and 1987.
• Clark's women's basketball team earned back-to-back NCAA Division III Final Four appearances and were NCAA Northeast Champions in 1982 and 1983.
• The Worcester State College Women's Soccer team advanced to the 3rd round of the NCAA Tournament in 2007, which was the most successful NCAA appearance of any team in Worcester State history. They beat the #5 ranked William Smith College by a score of 2–0 in the first round. After not receiving a national ranking all year, Worcester State ended the season at #21.

Notes