As Audra Nelson readied for elementary school, she had already decided that she was going to be a figure skater. The Winter Olympics had wooed her, and she focused all of her attention on the sport. But in 2nd grade, the Charlotte Junior Rugby Association (CJRA) selected her school to trial a rugby touch program, and suddenly, her passions were divided in two. Not long into middle school, Nelson had permanently traded her skates for boots, and went on to play co-ed tackle, help form a girls’ high school team, and become a Level 300 coach – all before her senior year of high school.
“Are you sure? Where is this coming from,” Nelson recited her parents’ reaction when she handed them the intro-to-rugby flyer. “They showed me some videos of professional rugby games, and I thought, ‘Yeah! That looks like fun!’
“In figure skating, it’s me doing my own thing, alone, but I wanted to do things with my friends. I wanted a team,” Nelson added.
So Nelson started playing co-ed touch in 2nd grade and spent those first two years with CJRA Director of Rugby Erik Saxon as her coach. She loved it, committed to the sport, and was excited to take that step into co-ed tackle rugby in 4th grade. She was the only girl on the Matthews team, which is part of CJRA.
“Erik talked to my parents and assured them that it would be safe, and that held true,” Nelson said.
Contact wise, it was safe to play with the boys, but she initially faced resistance from her teammates. There are co-ed tackle teams through 8th grade, and Nelson continually had to justify her place on the pitch.
“All the time, in 4th grade even,” Nelson spoke to the frequency of having to prove herself. “I stepped onto the field, and guys on the team would say, ‘Why is she here?’ Or, ‘Whose girlfriend are you?’ I get that a lot, even when I’m the coach. But my coach was really good about it. ‘That’s rude. She’s here because she wants to be and because she should be.’ I believed that, too, and said the same thing.
“We were scrimmaging at that first practice, and this guy made a breakthrough,” Nelson spoke to a turning point. “I tackled him right before the try zone and in that moment all my teammates realized, ‘Oh, she made a tackle. She did something,’ and from then on, all the boys in the rugby association supported me.”
Nelson developed a deep bond with her CJRA teammates, even when they were playing for the opposition.
“When I was in 4th grade, I was playing both touch and tackle,” Nelson set up one of her favorite memories. “I had friends from my tackle team who were on an opposing team during a touch game. My friend and I were both captains of our touch teams, and when we met with the ref before the game, he said, ‘Introduce yourselves,’ and we said, ‘Oh, we know each other,’ and hugged. My parents were on the sidelines, ‘What is going on!?’ That moment was one of my top rugby memories.”
Nelson played co-ed tackle through 8th grade, and during her final year with the boys, she became the second-ever girl to make the North Carolina Boys’ Middle School All-Star Team.
“We were at a tournament at Life University and had to play this team that had a real big issue with me playing as a girl,” said Nelson, who was playing scrumhalf. “It was very obvious. I was a little uncomfortable with the whole situation. They were trying to target me or whatever. But I remember thinking, ‘Let’s just win this. I’m going to work hard and show them I should be here because I should be.’
“Toward the end of the game, we were near their try zone, and we needed to score this try,” Nelson continued. “The ball came out the back of the scrum, I passed it out, but then he lost the ball when he got tackled. It was backward, but it was a loose ball, and there are so many people right there at the try line. I picked it up, passed it out to the backs and my teammate went through the whole line of defenders and just scored. It was a great moment because we could have lost the ball, but I made a quick, calm decision, and I didn’t get tackled or lose that opportunity to score.”
Nelson high-fived her opponents but she noted an insincerity that wasn’t replicated in the girls’ game. During 8th grade, she had the opportunity to play with an all-girls 7s team. Physically, she learned that she was faster than she had previously thought, but also that there was a different attitude around contact, communication and spirit of the game.
“It was very strange to me,” Nelson remembered that first all-girls team and tournament. “There was a very different team character and dynamic. But I thought it was great.
“I remember the first tackle of the game,” she continued. “It was a very slow game because a lot of the girls were new and the ref wanted to start slowly. I was fine with that. I was excited to see these other girls learn rugby. So this one girl makes a tackle and immediately said, ‘Oh my gosh, are you hurt? I’m so sorry,’ and helped her up. I was shocked. I had never seen that before. That was the first thing that was totally different [from the boys].
“The other thing that was very different is that the girls were giving more details about where they were,” Nelson said. “I’m a scrumhalf, so I’m always wondering who I’m passing to. The boys are more aggressive, ‘On your left; pass now.’ The girls were, ‘I’m on your right. I’m coming up now. You should pass now.’ It was more tentative.”
Nelson knew that 8th grade would be the last time to play with the boys, but she wasn’t as panicked about the switch after the experience with the girls’ 7s team.
“At the end of the game, there were no hard feelings,” Nelson said. “Some of the guys on my team, if they didn’t like someone, they’d made a face and I’d think, ‘C’mon, just shake their hands.’ Everyone hugged each other on the girls’ team. ‘It was so much fun to play with you,’ and they meant it. Our guys were respectful but it wasn’t, ‘Thank you so much for playing me!’ The girls were more emotionally invested.”
When Nelson enrolled at Providence High School as a freshman, Saxon helped her and three other founding members create a club team for the girls. The quartet relentlessly recruited on social media, merged with another team, and gained traction with the addition of Alicia and Geoff Tice as coaches. Today, the Charlotte Tigress have A and B sides, and went undefeated at the most recent Carolina Ruggerfest, beating multiple out-of-state teams.
Read more about girls’ high school rugby around Charlotte
Nelson continued with the North Carolina Girls High School All-Star program, but also got interested in coaching.
“When I was growing up there was always a high school player on the coaching staff, and I really looked up to them,” Nelson said. “I’ve always remembered that and I wanted to do that, too, because I learned a lot from them and they were such personable people.”
As a high school freshman, Nelson served as an assistant coach with the U10s in Matthews.
“At the beginning they were very skeptical of me because when we introduced ourselves, we told them our grades. ‘Do you actually know anything about rugby? Do we trust these people,” Nelson recited that familiar doubt. “But as soon as they started learning things, we developed a relationship of support between us.”
Saxon encouraged her to take the Level 200 course, and sophomore year she coached the middle schoolers.
“I just really enjoyed it. They were teaching me things and I was teaching them what I learned, and we were all loving rugby together,” Nelson said. “This year I found out about a Level 300 course at Queens University [of Charlotte]. I wanted to keep learning and getting better at this, so I took that opportunity, too.”
The coaching course also helped her relationship with her own high school team.
“I have a bad habit of talking too much,” Nelson said. “But as soon as I became aware of it and I learned more, I was able to correct those things or shift what I was doing to help my team. For example, my team had a hard time with rucking. Before, it was a long speech explaining how to ruck, but then I experimented with short bursts of instructions, followed by actually doing it and learning it, and having them correct each other. It was so much more productive and it worked.”
Nelson just finished her remote AP testing, and senior year will involve the selection of a college. She’s interested in computer science and is open to playing rugby in college, but emphasized that academics will be priority.
“I want to keep rugby in my life,” Nelson closed. “I think rugby is such a great sport and I know so many people who love it. I’ve had so many people to look up to and I’ve made so many friends. I can definitely see this in my future, whether it’s coaching or playing or being involved with a youth program.”