They share locker rooms, they sing together, sometimes even ride to the games on the same bus.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for Alev Kelter to recognize rugby might be her best, and most enjoyable, path to the Olympics.<\/p>\n
Unlike the cutthroat worlds of junior hockey and soccer she grew up in, Kelter saw something unique in rugby: a sense of camaraderie that wasn\u2019t always present in those other sports \u2014 to say nothing of a chance to compete in the Olympics, a goal she had come close to reaching in the other sports only to miss out near the final cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never a negative experience to have that competitiveness, because you always get the best out of people that way,\u201d Kelter said. \u201cBut in rugby, I want to keep that innocence of the competitiveness as we grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelter grew up in Anchorage and was an elite hockey and soccer player. She played both sports at the University of Wisconsin \u2014 she was second-team All-Big Ten in soccer as a sophomore and scored 15 goals in hockey her senior season.<\/p>\n
She was a frequent participant in national camps, with legitimate chances to make the Olympics in either, or both, sports. But the \u201cbest athletes\u201d often get passed over for the best hockey or soccer player when it comes to naming a squad at that level. It may have been Kelter\u2019s reluctance to choose one over the other that set her back ever so slightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I took that chance of playing both because I was passionate about it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d do it over again, she insists. Yet, after hearing the same dreaded word \u2014 \u201cNo\u201d \u2014 so many times, she had to take time to re-evaluate the spot sports should have in her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a lot of dreams that get shattered,\u201d she said. \u201cTo hear the nos, it really made me think about, \u2018What\u2019s my purpose? What am I doing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Off to the mountains she went. For the first time she could remember, Kelter was not, as she called it, \u201cunder contract,\u201d with Wisconsin, a junior team or anyone else. She snowboarded with abandon, knowing she could break a bone \u2014 or do anything \u2014 and only have to answer to herself.<\/p>\n
It gave her the freedom to move on, and at around that time, she received a call from the U.S. rugby coach at the time, Ric Suggitt, who was trying to build a team for the sport\u2019s first appearance at the Olympics since 1924. He asked one of his players, Lorrie Clifford, who could help the U.S. win a gold medal in Rio. Clifford didn\u2019t hesitate. Her childhood friend could: \u201cAlev Kelter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we had Alev, I just started laughing,\u201d Suggitt said. \u201cShe was unbelievable. Very, very raw but you could see how athletic she was. You could see all she\u2019d learned from playing soccer, from playing ice hockey, at the highest level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suggitt says Kelter\u2019s soccer skills make her arguably the best restarter in the world right now. A restart, in some ways, resembles a kickoff in American football, in that either team can grab possession after the ball travels 10 meters. But in rugby, it\u2019s possible to kick the ball so high that the kicking team has time to run under it and compete for possession.<\/p>\n
Kelter\u2019s best skill, according to her former coach, is her ability to kick it so high \u201cmy grandmother has enough time to run underneath and get the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
The International Olympic Committee added Rugby Sevens to the program starting this year in Rio. The sport is a fixture in other countries \u2014 Australia, New Zealand, South Africa \u2014 but more on the developing side in the United States. If things go right for the Americans \u2014 and that would include Kelter kicking her best \u2014 they could contend for a medal.<\/p>\n
Either way, she\u2019s convinced she\u2019ll have a great time.<\/p>\n
After all, it calls for just that in the rulebook.<\/p>\n
Kelter was fascinated by some of the passages from the laws of Rugby Union \u2014 passages that probably wouldn\u2019t be found in the rulebooks of most other sports:<\/p>\n
\u2014\u201dThe long standing tradition of players from competing teams enjoying each other\u2019s company away from the pitch and in a social context, remains at the very core of the Game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u201dRugby has fully embraced the professional era, but has retained the ethos and traditions of the recreational Game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelter saw all that and knew she wanted to be part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives me chills, because I didn\u2019t have that growing up with hockey and soccer,\u201d she said. \u201cThose sports, you might sneeze wrong and someone will take your spot. In rugby, there\u2019s a spirit. You show your competitiveness on the field in the most appropriate way, and then afterward, you\u2019re really good friends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They share locker rooms, they sing together, sometimes even ride to the games on the same bus. It didn\u2019t take long for Alev Kelter to recognize rugby might be her best, and most enjoyable, path to the Olympics. Unlike the cutthroat worlds of junior hockey and soccer she grew up in, Kelter saw something unique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":16523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16522"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}