The last time the United States won a medal in rugby was in 1924 when the men took home gold. After those Olympics, rugby was discontinued and did not return again until 2016, when it was reintroduced to the Games in a version of the sport called Rugby sevens, where the game is played seven-a-side.
Both the men’s and women’s USA rugby sevens teams qualified in 2016, but neither made the podium, and this pattern continued until the women had their breakthrough tournament in 2024, defeating Australia in a wild bronze medal match, which included a score in the final seconds to secure their historic spot on the podium.
USA rugby players Lauren Doyle and Kayla Canett spoke about the team’s values in the documentary series, 51% The Women of Team USA, which they believed got the team over the hump to win their first Olympic medal. Doyle explained, “Over the last three Olympics, I think the major differences between those teams have been the culture aspect of it.”
Creating a championship culture has become a major buzzword in sports, and many people cite it as the key to building a sustained winning program. In fact, some people believe that you can’t win without it. In the GameChange Training Camp, Building Championship Culture, high-performance mindset coach, Dr. Michael Brown stated, “In my 25 years of working with athletic teams at high school, collegiate, and national professional levels, I have found that without a healthy culture, without being very intentional about creating culture, there is no success.”
So, what intention did the USA women’s rugby team set when striving to build a winning culture? The team created a concept that they called High Women. “The high woman message that we all got behind was just so powerful in uniting us,” said Doyle. She explained the meaning of the concept as “women who stood for something bigger than themselves in order to see change in the world.”
The players were involved in building the values of the team by providing an opportunity to each one of them to introduce their own high woman. Canett explained, “We each came forward with a high woman from our life and a high woman that we saw in professional sports to use that as a way to find the values that we wanted to have as a team.”
It was an emotional exercise. “There was a lot of tears shed that day when we did share our personal one. Once we did that shift to just connect yourself to more than just the sport of rugby,” recalled Doyle. She added, “There was a big shift in our game execution.”
Canett explained the purpose that the High Women exercise gave to the team. “We want to be women that people look up to and that little girls can look up to, little boys can look up to.”
It should not be a surprise that the rugby team’s approach garnered them their historic medal. Playing with purpose has been scientifically proven to boost performance by enhancing motivation, increasing resilience, and enhancing cognitive function. “It’s always about leaving the jersey in a better place than where you found it, and that’s been also a huge part of our culture,” stated Doyle.
Mission accomplished.
