Aleksandria Gabbard watched the Olympics with a keen interest in Team USA’s Rugby team.
The team that won a bronze medal — USA’s first in the sevens — captured the hearts of many casual viewers.
However, there is nothing “casual” about Gabbard, a recent Marana High School grad, and rugby.
Gabbard, one of the elite rugby players in the country, was one of 26 Americans selected as part of Rugby USA’s U18 team that trained for two weeks in Cardiff, Wales. She is now in the pool of players for the World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
She already has something in common with this year’s Olympians.
“Two days into the Wales trip, I saw Ilona Maher post on Instagram, and she had the exact same warm-up kit. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is so cool,’” Gabbard said. “We started watching their games at the airport on our way back to the United States … and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we wore those jerseys. I have that jersey in my suitcase right now.’ It’s just really cool.”
“My goal with rugby is to become the best player I can be, and that means playing at the highest level competitions available to me,” said Aleksandria Gabbard, right.
Gabbard added that it’s an honor to “share” the same uniforms and that it also “incentivizes” those on the U18 team to know that if they put in the work, they could be Olympians.
She is a few years away from any of that happening. Wales was just one of the steps she’s taken to put her in contention to carry the torch of what the current U.S. Olympians have accomplished.
She played for Rhinos Rugby Academy, a national development program, and competed in Austria at the United World Games and in South Africa in the Rugby 10s championship last November. She also played for the Tucson Thunderbirds.
Gabbard tried other sports, including basketball and track in high school, but she always came back to rugby.
“I think it’s just the community in general,” Gabbard said.
“The rugby community is accepting and it makes you a better person. There's not that, ‘Oh, you're the opposition. We hate each other.’ It's very much like, ‘Hey, good game. Let's go get pizza afterwards.’ Or ‘Let’s be friends and just bond over our love of rugby.’ It's not just an Arizona thing, but it's very international. Everyone supports each other on an international scale. It’s like, ‘Hey, we just want to be the best rugby players we can, and that means playing hard competition and having hard games, but we're still going to support and build each other up.’”
Aleksandria Gabbard (25) is now in the pool of players for the World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
A family affair
In Wales, Gabbard also trained with athletes from Scotland and the Netherlands. She was nervous at first because she has played the sevens, which is what is played in Arizona. There she would be training in the 15s. The differences between the two styles of play include the number of athletes on the field or pitch, and time of play. The sevens play seven-minute halves, while 15s, which is played in college, plays 40-minute halves.
Just as most anything else related to rugby — including rule changes every year — Gabbard adjusted quickly. Watching a lot of rugby over the years helped, and, as she said, in general, “The rugby IQ part came more naturally to me than it does to others.”
She’s been around the game for most of her young life and started playing when she was 7 years old.
You could say it is a family affair. Her parents, Angela Wagner-Gabbard and Barry Gabbard, founded Marana Youth Rugby. her older brother, Tyler Pedone, played at GCU. He is nine years older than Aleksandria, and watching him play gave her a sense of what high school and college games looked like.
Aleksandria Gabbard
Her younger brother, Wyatt (15), is her training partner. They’d hit the gym together during the school year.
She’s also pitched in with coaching and being a referee at the rugby club. These roles have given her a different perspective on the sport.
“Being able to take a step back from the game and be like, ‘Hey, if I was a ref, these are the signals I look for penalties,’ makes me a more intuitive player,” Gabbard said. “As a referee, you have to take in so many different environmental considerations and say ‘Was that tackle too high at the end of the tackle, as opposed to the beginning of the tackle?’ It’s just keeping in mind a lot of rules that aren't explicitly talked about as players.”
Shooting for the stars
Outside of rugby, Gabbard’s big dream is becoming an astronaut. She will be attending NAU this fall and the Naval Academy after that to major in aerospace engineering.
Her pull towards space might have been sparked by a great uncle who helped build the Challenger and hearing him talk about “the testing aspects, working in a group, and getting to play such a pivotal role in the future of space exploration.”
That spark was ignited even more when she was 11 years old and went to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. It meant even more to her because she saved up all her money from babysitting — $1,000 — to attend.
“I just loved it,” Gabbard said. “I met an astronaut and asked him about his experience. We learned about space exploration and the engineering aspects of spaceships.”
For now, her attention is drawn to the pitch and reaching her potential to represent her country in the World Cup and Olympics, which some of her coaches — those who have trained Olympians — have told her is within her grasp.
“My goal with rugby is to become the best player I can be, and that means playing at the highest level competitions available to me,” Gabbard said. “I think that it's a definite possibility that I could be there one day (Olympics and World Cup) … Having all these support systems, and just that rugby community (where) we want everyone to be the best — across borders, across religion, across languages.
"There's that love of the game and wanting everyone to be the best player they can be.”
