USU athlete is living a dream
After graduation, few college athletes have the opportunity to play sports at a higher level. Most of them hang up their boots for good, putting their hopes behind them.
Becca Ogden is not one of those players, though. In fact, she’s done what most college athletes can only dream of.
Ogden is playing professional rugby.
In October, Ogden and eight of her teammates from Utah State University made Utah’s national women’s rugby team and traveled to California to play other state teams and to have the chance to tryout for the Grizzly Shield, a professional team that consists of players from all over the Pacific Coast.
Ogden never expected to make the list for the one day, four-hour tryouts, and she never even dreamed of making the team.
“I left the tryouts thinking, oh well, I learned a lot from it, maybe next year,” Ogden said. “Then they put out the list and three of us from Utah made the team. It’s pretty amazing really.”
Only a couple of weeks after tryouts, Ogden and her teammates on the Grizzlies traveled to Vancouver, Canada to play their first game, in which Ogden played every minute.
“They play on a whole different level, so when you get to travel with them and play with them you learn so much,” Ogden said.
Despite playing the whole game in Vancouver, Ogden said she didn’t feel like she played well enough to be on the team.
Ogden has only been playing rugby for two years she said, before that, she had never seen a rugby game or even a rugby ball.
But learning is part of rugby, Ogden said.
“I still don’t know all the rules. It’s so complex, you learn something new every game,” Ogden said. “Once you play your first game it all kind of makes sense, then you just keep learning more and more. Every day I learn something new.”
She started playing rugby her first year at USU after a friend, Lindsey Lovell, and her decided they just wanted to try something different. From there, Ogden said, it was her experience from the past that helped her adjust.
Ogden, who recently turned 20, grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, and is the only girl in her family, with one older and one younger brother.
“On one side of my family there’s 11 grandkids, 10 are boys and I’m the only girl, so you have to learn to fight with them,” Ogden said.
It was the experience she received by being the only girl that helped her excel in high school soccer, softball and basketball, she said, and eventually rugby, but even she didn’t think she would go this far.
“I just got a break,” Ogden said.
That break made Ogden one of the few athletes to fulfill their dreams, but she’s not quite sure she wants all the attention that goes along with being a professional rugby player, Ogden said.
“I hate it. It’s such a team sport,” Ogden said. “I’d rather just go and be a part of a team and not be singled out.”
Being a part of a team is what she enjoys the most about rugby, Ogden said, especially a professional team.
“You dress like a true club,” she said. “You feel kind of honored that you get to represent the whole Pacific Coast.”