When shaking hands with a top-tier rugby player, the tiniest thought loiters in the back of your mind. You’re sure, if they wanted to, they could crush all the bones in your hand with one squeeze.
It’s not that rugby players are threatening, they’re just strong – and tough.
Amelia Ahrens, a graduate of Rye High School in 2022 and the University of Vermont in 2026, is one such athlete.
The day before departing for Dublin, where she now lives and trains with one of Ireland’s oldest and most elite clubs, Railway Union RFC, Ahrens talked about what drew her to the sport.
“I love rugby so much,” Ahrens said. “I’d never even heard of the sport until I was in eighth grade at Rye Middle School. Playing this amazing sport has changed my life.”
When it comes to rugby, Ahrens is hardly alone.
The sport has a way of reaching its practitioners and aficionados at the cellular level. Ahrens wears the No. 5 jersey, reserved for “the lock,” a forward position that’s part of the team’s engine room. Her job is to secure and contest possession of the ball, using her towering height and raw strength.
That pretty much sums up Ahrens. As a youngster growing up in an athletic Rye family, she played mostly ice hockey.
“I never minded the contact,” she remembered. “It was my favorite part.”
Contact was so crucial to Ahrens’ existence that she and her family approached Rye City Schools about playing modified football.
“They said I could, but that I’d have to play kicker,” she said. “No offense to kickers, but that sounded extra boring. I wanted to crack some people. I went to a rugby interest meeting that fall and now I’m off to Ireland to play. I still can’t believe it myself.”
Ahrens played four years of rugby for Rye High School – sort of. In the first half of the first live game of her rugby career as a freshman, she suffered a season-ending knee injury. Her sophomore season was canceled due to COVID.
At the start of junior year, with a clean bill of health, Ahrens injured her other knee. End of season.
“When senior year rolled around, I was fit and ready for action,” Ahrens said. “There weren’t many women’s high school teams for us to play, but we made the best of it.”
Her rugby resume picked up steam from there.
Ahrens played four years of mostly injury-free rugby for the women’s club team at Vermont, where she majored in political science.
Earlier this year, she was invited to live and train for six months with another of the most historic clubs in the world, Ponsonby Rugby Club in Auckland, New Zealand.
“I got to play alongside players like Eloise Blackwell, a former captain of the Black Ferns (the New Zealand national women’s rugby team). I was fan-girling the entire time,” Ahrens said. “In college, I was one of the bigger women on our team. With the Ponsonby Fillies, I was one of the smaller players on the team. But I watched and I learned.”
Upon returning to U.S. soil, Ahrens was immediately recruited by the New York Exiles, a semi-professional team in a league called Women’s Elite Rugby. The Exiles are now in their offseason, which gives Ahrens a chance to play abroad. With dual-citizenship in the U.S. and the Netherlands, she had no issues with visas or complicated paperwork.
“My plan is to take rugby as far as it will take me,” Ahrens said. “When I land in Dublin, I’ll have two goals: 1) find a job; and 2) play as much rugby at the highest level I possibly can.”
For the next nine months, that will be in the highly competitive 1st Division of the Women’s All-Ireland League.
Even with the United States women winning the bronze medal in rugby at the 2024 Olympics in Paris – Ahrens and her family just happened to be in the stadium on that historic day – women’s rugby is somewhat of a young sport in the U.S.
But like many women’s sports – soccer, the WNBA, ice hockey – participation and interest in rugby is on the rise.
“No one on earth is playing women’s rugby right now for the money,” Ahrens said. “Would it be nice one day if that were the case? Absolutely. But the sport isn’t there yet. Most players in top-tier women’s rugby clubs have full-time jobs outside of rugby – just like the men who play in the Premier Lacrosse League in the U.S.”
Ahrens’ trajectory as an international rugby player is just getting started.
“I’ve always believed, in sports, that if you want to improve, you have to play with people who are better than you,” she said. “Training with high-performance players in Dublin, with elite-live coaching … it’s like a rugby dream come true.”
With her parents, Rye residents Liz and Brian Ahrens, scheduled to make the trip overseas this fall, Ahrens has lots of support.
“One day, who knows, I may end up playing for the U.S. women’s national team,” she said.
And why not?
Through all the smiles and infectious enthusiasm in Ahrens’ feel-good Rye rugby story, there is one person to feel a bit sorry for: the woman who is currently wearing the No. 5 jersey for Railway Union RFC.
