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Kristi Kirshe finally considers herself a rugby player.
The 29-year-old from Franklin started the sport in February of 2018 as a 23-year-old former college soccer player searching for a competitive outlet. In barely more than half a decade, she’s become a two-time Olympian and a stalwart member of the U.S. national seven-a-side team, the Women’s Eagles.
“She is the heartbeat of our team,” USA 7s coach Emilie Bydwell said.
Kirshe has made 81 appearances for Team USA, including the Tokyo Olympics and 2022 World Cup Sevens in South Africa. She and the 13 other Eagles are aiming for a medal after a disappointing quarterfinal finish in Tokyo. The opening ceremonies are Friday, and women’s rugby competition begins Sunday.
“It’s something I never really thought would happen once,” Kirshe said. “So to be in a position where it’s happening twice, it’s pretty surreal.”
Maybe only to her. The women that introduced her to rugby recognized the possibility quickly.
Poking and prodding
Grace Conley, a former Franklin teammate and longtime friend, poked and prodded Kirshe to try rugby throughout college because of the way she played soccer and basketball. Kirshe didn’t need the sport yet.
She arrived at Williams an accomplished multi-sport athlete and thrived as an Eph. Kirshe holds Williams’ single-season and career goal-scoring records and is tied for the program’s career assist record. She was a two-time All-American and won a national championship in 2015.
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Kirshe moved to Boston once she graduated in 2017 and missed competing. Weekly adult soccer didn’t quench her appetite.
“Part of me felt like my time with sport wasn’t done,” she said.
Conley, who played club rugby at Boston University, slowly introduced Kirshe to her college friends playing for the Boston Women’s Rugby Club. She initially resisted, saying “No, I’m a soccer player. I can’t be a rugby player.” Kirshe eventually caved because she missed playing a sport so much and attended a practice in February of 2018.
“There was no holding back”
The Boston Women’s team gathered in gyms for a few sessions when temperatures and weather didn’t let them outside yet. After the first practice, Kirshe told Conley she was so bad at the sport she didn’t know how to play and “everything is terrible,” Conley said.
Then Conley spoke to members of the team. They told a different story.
“The athlete came out, and she was picking up stuff really quickly, ball in hand, really fast, good footwork,” said Stacey Markovic, Boston Women’s current captain and a former teammate of Kirshe. “It didn’t take a lot to see that she was going to pick up whatever we put down.”
The team rented turf space before their first game of the season to practice tackling after not drilling contact all winter. Markovic puled Kirshe aside to walk through the full contact piece, building it up from the knees. The physicality came naturally.
“I feel like I sacrificed myself on that one. I was getting beat up so fast in the best rugby way possible. She wasn’t afraid of the contact,” Markovic said. “There was no holding back. Any little tidbit, she was hungry for more, which as a teammate or a captain was amazing to see.”
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Kirshe played her first full game of 15s (15 players a side) that spring of 2018. She didn’t have as much room to work but learned the sport and the rules often on the sidelines during play. The switch to 7s (seven players per team on the same size pitch) in the summer unlocked her potential in open space. Coaches from other teams asked Conley, who was assisting with coaching by that point, “Who’s that one?”
They’d find out soon enough.
Another level
Kirshe’s Boston Women’s teammates encouraged her to seek a higher level of competition. She joined the Northeast Academy program and participated in a USA Rugby sponsored tournament in Chula Vista, California. Then-coach Richard Walker noticed her there.
Markovic sat next to Bydwell, who was USA Rugby’s high performance director but not yet the 7s coach at the time, at a women in rugby conference, and Bydwell brought up Krishe unprompted. It became clear she wouldn’t be able to play for Boston Women’s much longer.
“I’m hoping it’s not a once or twice in a lifetime event,” Markovic said. “I also feel honored to have the opportunity to play with her. That is so rare.”
USA Rugby invited her to join the Women’s Falcons development team for the Hokkaido Governor’s Cup in September of 2018, barely seven months after she first picked up a rugby ball. She received her first senior team call up in 2019 in Sydney.
“It was pretty much a whirlwind once I got into it. I do feel like for me rugby has been the perfect combination of all the sports I grew up playing. There’s a lot of pieces of a lot of sports that I played that all come together in rugby,” Kirshe said. “I found it really late, but I feel like it was the sport I was waiting to find my entire life.”
Go forward, but give back
Even as an Olympian in 2021, Kirshe still felt like an athlete playing rugby more than a rugby player. She embraced everything the difference meant in the time between Tokyo and Paris.
Kirshe never lost her connection to her home club at Boston Women’s or the people who taught her the game. When Markovic or Conley text her about a great game, she still responds. Kirshe will visit area collegiate and high school practices when she’s in Massachusetts.
“She’s part of the thread of the community. There’s nothing that can replace that,” Markovic said. “There’s nothing we could ask that she wouldn’t try in her best ability to do.”
That goes both ways, too. Both Markovic and Conley are traveling to Paris to watch Kirshe play. They couldn’t in Tokyo. Neither could her parents.
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”It’s going to feel like a completely new experience,” Kirshe said.
In more ways than one. Kirshe was a new member of the squad finding her way in 2021. Now she is a veteran and a leader.
“Culturally for us she’s such a good person. She lives the values of our team so well – work ethic, courage and resilience, as well as selflessness and how much she loves this team and how she would do anything for the people around her,” Bydwell said. “That makes us a better team when you have somebody like that that’s going to sacrifice and put their body on the line for their teammates without question every day.”
Officially Kirshe plays hooker and prop, but positions don’t matter much in 7s. She participates in the scrums and lifts on line outs, but otherwise her role depends on the positioning. In any given moment Kirshe could be running with the ball in space, tackling or receiving a pass from a teammate. Her soccer and lacrosse background allows her to see the field and track offensive players to a step. Plus she can threaten to drop kick for points with both feet.
“Rugby calls on different types of things that you need from those different sports,” Bydwell said. “As we’re looking toward LA (in 2028) as well, seeing this template that is Kristie Kirshe seeing if we can find – they may not be rugby players yet – but seeing if we can find athletes that have a similar profile gives us more confidence we can make ore of these world class players from talent transfers. … She’s such an example of what American rugby is.”
And what it can become.
Contact Kyle Grabowski at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @kylegrbwsk.