How Women’s Rugby Uses The ‘High Women Philosophy’ To Go For Gold
There’s a reason the United States women’s rugby sevens team’s TikToks are going viral, and it’s not just for their hysterical observations from inside the Olympic Village. When the cameras are off, the team is placing consistent, intentional emphasis on connecting at a deeper level—and it’s that undeniable bond that makes them so fun to watch, both on the pitch and on a phone screen.
“We are full-time athletes. Our lives revolve around this sport and this team and this organization,” team co-captain Naya Tapper said at a press conference in Paris on July 27, one day before the team took the field for the first matches of the tournament. “So for this Olympic buildup, we’ve really put a big focus on our culture, creating values that resonate with all of us.”
So far, it’s working. Team U.S.A. is 3-1 in Olympic play, headed to the semifinals for the first time in history. No U.S. rugby team, women or men, has made it this close to a medal since the men’s team won gold in Paris in 1924. Women’s rugby made its Olympic debut in Rio in 2016, where the U.S. placed fifth.
Tapper says nurturing values like selflessness, resilience, and courage is key to their team unity, as well as an exercise they refer to as the high woman philosophy. Each player spent time on their own thinking about the women in their lives who motivate them and inspire them to show up every day, then presented that list to their teammates. Every time they step out on the pitch, they remember who they’re representing.
“We all know what each other’s ‘why’s are, so when you do have those fluctuations in energy and performance, we’re able to continually raise each other up no matter what,” Tapper says. “I think that builds the strongest connection.”
Zeroing In On Their High Women
The team went through a few rounds of sharing their ‘high women.’ The first round was someone personally close to them, like a mom or grandma. Three-time Olympian Alev Kelter chose her grandmother, Leyla, who immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. “She’s 96 years old and made the trek out to Paris to come watch,” Kelter says. “She models to me how to be confident, how to not be afraid, and to not be afraid of the word ‘no.’”
Ilona Maher, who has become a bona fide social media sensation at her second Olympics, says her “why” is her family—including her mom, a nurse who inspired Maher to go to nursing school, and her two sisters, one of whom is also her manager.
“I do a lot of things to make my family proud,” Maher says. “When I’m out there playing, with all this attention I’ve been getting, I just want to play for my teammates, and I want to play for my mom and my sisters and my family.”
The players also chose ‘high women’ they respect and admire who are outside of their family. Tapper pointed to Serena Williams for her role as a trailblazer in the body positivity space. “I think she was the first woman who put in my head that muscles were a beautiful thing for women,” she says.
Nicole Heavirland, who is competing in her second Olympics, chose 11-time medalist Allyson Felix—not necessarily for her accomplishments on the track, but for the way she shows that women athletes can be more than their sport. “A picture that comes to mind is her holding her baby at the Olympic trials. That, to me, is so powerful,” Heavirland says. This year, Felix is behind the first-ever nursery for parent-athletes in the Olympic Village. “I look up to her and hope one day to have a baby and still compete.”
Co-captain Lauren Doyle chose Taylor Swift as one of her ‘high women’ once she learned that Swift was re-recording her old music to regain control of her own copyrights. “I just thought that was amazing, and I didn’t know that about her,” says Doyle, who admittedly does not consider herself a Swiftie. “If we wouldn’t have had the high woman project, I wouldn’t have actually did some research and got to know Taylor Swift a little bit better.” She’s still interested in learning more about Swift’s music, which her rugby roommates promise to help her with.
Controlling The Controllables
Team bonding—a key component on the mental side of rugby—has helped this group grow in their individual and group confidence. These days, the women spend less of their team meetings focusing on X’s and O’s and instead dedicate more time on their mental game with team sports psychologist Peter Haberl.
“It would be asinine to say that we all know ourselves fully, in and out, and we’re so confident we don’t have doubt or anything like that. We struggle with that daily,” Kelter says. “What we do day in and day out—talk about our values and have sports psych meetings and talk about our high women—is because we need to be more comfortable having vulnerable conversations.”
They also often funnel confidence through each other. For Maher, going viral on social media has led to lots of comments from strangers about her body or appearance. She recognizes that those strangers online don’t know her the way her teammates do, so she turns to some of her best friends, Heavirland and Tapper, to bring her back to reality.
“For me, it’s having a team of women—and that’s why I want people to play sport, to have a team around you and people around you who know you and who can really be that light to you,” Maher says. Tapper, in particular, she says, is “running a confidence pyramid scheme” that she admires. “Naya has really changed how I view myself and how I view my body.”
It’s fitting that Tapper first locked into that mindset via one of her ‘high women,’ Serena Williams, and now shares that with Maher. For U.S. women’s rugby, it all comes full circle.
Under Pressure
As a top-four team in the world, the pressure is high for U.S. rugby to leave Paris with its first-ever Olympic medal. The team believes they have done the work, mentally and physically, to get there.
“It’s focusing on what we can control. We can’t control what other teams are going to do or bring, but we can control ourselves and how we show up,” says Heavirland, who has worked with team psychologist Haberl for over a decade. “We have this big baggage of ‘Olympic gold, Olympic gold,’ but if we do the ingredients of being a good teammate and showing up, then the outcome will speak for itself.”
They’re also looking at the big picture. Beyond the accolades and the social media likes, this bond reflected on the rugby pitch in front of sold-out crowds at Stade de France is the true secret sauce to growing the game they love, Doyle says.
“Obviously you come to the Olympics and you want to do good and you want to medal, but I think what’s a little bit more powerful is when people watch the games and they see our connection and they can feel our culture being shown,” she says. “I think we do a pretty good job of delivering the high woman message and getting that out to the world.”
Besides, it’s all connected. Tapper doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that, after all the mental preparation work, her team is thriving like never before.
“Having that true connection, having a culture that represents us, since it’s something that we’ve built—you’ve seen the impact that it’s had on our performance,” Tapper says. “We think we’ve set ourselves up very well with the high woman philosophy—the high woman foundation—to be able to put us where we want to be.”
Amanda Lucci is the director of special projects at Women’s Health and a NASM-certified personal trainer. She has more than 12 years of experience writing, editing, and managing social media strategy for national and international publications.
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