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Volleyball and track drove Marisa Hall as a student-athlete at Park High School in Cottage Grove. But then she found rugby — a game that matched her competitive nature and her toughness. She was hooked.
Playing matches in the Twin Cities, she caught the attention of Lindenwood University in Missouri, one of the country’s top women’s college rugby programs. Hall played on championship teams at Lindenwood and then Scion Rugby, a Washington, D.C.-based squad.
She closed the circle this spring, moving back to Minnesota to play in the inaugural season of the TC Gemini, one of six teams in the new Women’s Elite Rugby league.
Hall’s local roots have made her a fan favorite and advocate for a sport increasingly popular with women, one that’s catching some energy now with the rising interest in women’s sports, especially in Minnesota.
Rugby “challenges every part of me — mentally, physically and emotionally,” Hall, 27, told MPR News. “It’s a sport that demands grit, resilience and heart and in return gives you a second family and a strength you never knew you had.”
Playing at home is “unreal,” Hall said after a recent game. “I played in high school and we had no crowd. Now to have this big crowd and to see my family come out, it means the world to me.”
‘OK to exist in a bigger body’
Mixing elements of football and soccer, rugby’s a pretty straightforward game. In traditional “15s” play, two teams of 15 players each are split into forwards and backs. A match has two 40-minute halves.
The goal: advance the ball past an opponent’s side of the field and touch it to the ground for a score of 5 points. Two-point conversions and 3-point penalties can also be scored.
While American kids typically don’t grow up playing rugby, national stars like Olympian Ilona Maher have helped make it part of the conversation.
She uses social media to talk about her life as an athlete and about women’s body-image expectations. In a recent social video, she talked about the pressure she has felt from weight-loss advertisements online.
“And here I am with another gentle but firm reminder that it is OK to exist in a bigger body,” she says. “A lot of us are not meant to be small. I’m not meant to be small. This big old frame — I’m supposed to be 200 pounds, which is what I am now. I think we are getting this messaging and this is what’s right and this is what’s beautiful and it’s just not the case.”
Interest in women’s rugby in the United States jumped after Maher’s team beat Australia for the bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. That’s helped bring enthusiastic crowds this spring in the Women’s Elite Rugby league’s inaugural season.
Providing for the fans and hoping they keep coming back is a major goal for the league, said Kathryn “KJ” Johnson, 33, a TC Gemini player and Hopkins native who played rugby for Team USA in the 2016 Olympics.
After the Olympics, she moved back to Minnesota to focus on a career and reconnect with family. She currently lives in Minneapolis and works as a firefighter.
She said she lost her love of the game after working for years so hard on one goal and had to learn how to regrow her passion. When she heard there was going to be a Minnesota team, she jumped at the chance.
It can be hard to balance play and work, but she said her fellow firefighters help her by trading shifts and showing up to cheer her on when they can.
“It’s really hard and really awesome at the same time,” Johnson said about carrying her identity on the field. “Just being able to battle it in front of the guys I battle on the houses with, it’s just a whole different experience being able to show how I am outside of work. I wouldn’t play for any other state.”
‘Something about women’s sports’
Besides TC Gemini, the Women’s Elite Rugby League includes teams in Denver, Chicago, Boston, New York and northern California.
Beyond the Olympics-driven growth, Hall, Johnson and others say what’s happening now in rugby is part of a larger wave of interest in women’s professional sports, especially in the Twin Cities.
Statewide, women’s teams have continued to dominate. The Minnesota Frost last year won the inaugural Professional Women’s Hockey League championship and this week won the league’s second championship.
The Lynx, winners of four WNBA championships, went again to the WNBA finals in 2024. In professional soccer, the Minnesota Aurora have won the division championships the last three years and made it to the finals.
At a Bar of Their Own, the women’s sports bar in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, fans can’t get enough.
“There’s something about women’s sports, the fandoms, everything — it just feels more welcoming, it’s more fun. It has a whole different vibe, nothing beats it,” said Jesse Heiman, who said he initially got more interested in women’s sports from watching the Frost play hockey.
He said he’d never been a big rugby fan but when he heard Minnesota would have a team he knew he had to show up. “It’s been fun convincing my friends to give sports a try and realizing that women’s sports have just so much to offer on a different level.”
Abbie McMillan, Hall’s sister, says she’s happy to finally get to see her play at the professional level in person and that the players are role models for generations of women to come.
“It’s really beautiful getting to see these women compete at a high level and being able to show that off in front of these next generations of girls and letting them know that they can play sports,” she said. “They can play sports that are rough and tough, they don't have to just do cute things.. “They can go out there and use all that they have to be able to compete.”
That includes her daughter, 8-year-old Aasyeya Tubbs, who’s spent her spring cheering on Hall and her TC Gemini team and who will no doubt be at TCO Stadium in Eagan Saturday night to watch the second-to-last home game.
Aasyeya wanted people to know two things about her auntie: she makes the best cookies, and she was born to play rugby.
The TC Gemini’s record for the season is 2-5. There are two more home games, May 31 at 7 p.m. and June 13 at 7 p.m. The inaugural Women’s Elite Rugby league championship, the Legacy Cup, will be held at TCO Stadium in Eagan on June 29.
English (US) ·