Alaska’s growing rugby community hopes to ride the wave of momentum from Alev Kelter and Team USA’s Olympic triumphs

One of the most compelling stories of the first week of the 2024 Paris Olympics was the USA women’s sevens rugby team, which claimed a bronze medal in dramatic fashion.

The team was helped to its first ever medal by Alaska’s Alev Kelter and the performance has generated interest in the sport locally and statewide.

Alaska Rugby Union vice president Jami Almonte said the group has already been making an effort to promote the game with women and hopes the increased attention on the sport can continue that momentum.

“We are really looking to grow women’s rugby in this state and this past year was the first in the (Midnight Suns 7s) tournament’s history that we had more women’s teams than men’s teams,” she said.

Nine women’s teams competed in the tournament this past June and because it was the bigger division for once, they got the better game time slots and bigger prize money pot, which made competition even more fierce.

“Now we’re trying to get our local teams to mirror that and see how we can get more women involved in the two teams in Anchorage or any of the teams elsewhere around the state,” Almonte said. “Using these women from the U.S. team as examples is going to be huge because they’re going viral. They’re super popular, super positive and encourage everyone from every body type and every walk of life. If we can piggyback off them to build our programs, that would be great.”

In an effort to ride the wave of momentum the Olympic spotlight has given them, the two Anchorage-based teams in the Union, Anchortown Rugby and the Arctic Foxes, canceled their scrimmage against each other that was scheduled for this past Saturday.

Instead, they opted to come together to co-host a “how to play” clinic for women who were interested in exploring the sport.

One of the newcomers in attendance who was inspired after watching one of Alaska’s finest lead Team USA to medal was 33-year-old Kat Kennemer.

While she is not completely new to sport as she briefly played it in college at Oregon State University from 2009-2013, an injury had caused her to give it up for the time being.

“Watching rugby sevens, I was like ‘I forgot how much fun this is!,’ ” she said. “It looked like so much fun and being able to watch one of the players actually pick up another girl as she was running.”

One of the aspects of the sport Kennemer missed most was the camaraderie that comes with it.

“It was all these fantastic women supporting each other and just having a good time,” she said. “I was missing that group camaraderie. I have friends and whatnot that I hang out with but (I) just sit around most of the time on my couch.”

Kennemer, who is originally from Oregon but came to Alaska after getting a job with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, had been contemplating reaching out to a local rugby club prior to Team USA winning a medal but once they did, she began searching more seriously.

The youth rugby season just finished right on the heels of the Olympics so many of the interested parents and kids will have to wait to sign up. But Almonte said there’s still been a burst of interest.

“We’ve gotten tons of interest from parents reaching out via email, our Facebook pages trying to get their kids involved,” Almonte said. “It was amazing after that bronze medal and all the media (attention) surrounding Alev and women’s rugby specifically because they’ve done so well at the international level.”

Almonte appreciates how Kelter and her fellow members on the Team USA women’s rugby team use their various platforms to promote and support causes that uplift everyone they reach.

“They’re all just really have a great social media presence in promoting the sport, body positivity and that ‘Rugby is for everybody’ kind of mindset,” she said.

While the women’s team may be motiving girls to get into the game, Almonte believes that it is a “mixed bag” with parents of both boys and girls reaching out to try to get their kids involved.

“Even though it’s the (USA) women’s team that is doing well, it’s inspiring a lot of young people in general,” Almonte said.

On the adult side, they’ve seen an uptick in interest at the senior, old gals, and old guys division from across the state including in places where the Union isn’t present or thought was possible to reach.

“We had somebody message us on our Facebook account asking how they can get a team started all the way up in Delta Junction, which is pretty cool,” Almonte said. “There’s a group out in Homer that is getting a program running and is really interested in becoming a bigger part of the Union and seeing how they can get clinics running through us.”

There is still a stigma associated with the sport especially among women who might be curious but then see highlights of professional players such as Ilona Maher running through and over would-be tacklers.

“We have to tell them we’re not quite at that level and it’s about teaching people that it is not as dangerous as it looks,” Almonte said. “It’s just as safe as any other contact sport whether we have pads or not.”

She said the Union emphasizes teaching the sport the “right way” by showing them how much of a physical outlet it can be, the confidence that comes with discovering what they’re capable of and the camaraderie it creates.

“There’s a whole lot more to it aside from just hitting people,” Almonte said.