The Prairie States Women’s Rugby 7’s All Star Team will be competing in the National Collegiate Rugby Tournament next week in Atlanta, Georgia.

The team is composed of players from the Prairie States Conference, which includes South Dakota State, South Dakota, Augustana, Southwest Minnesota State, Minnesota Morris and Wayne State. Cady Olson is the head coach of Prairie States and she is also the head coach of the club teams at SDSU.

Prairie States has competed in the All Star Tournament four times in the past. They came in second place in their first tournament in 2018 and then won the tournament in 2019. There was no tournament in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID. Olson then took over as head coach of the team in 2022 and they finished in sixth place.

In 2023 Prairie States did not have enough players to send the team to the tournament, but they had four players from those schools compete on the West team and that team went on to win the championship. Last year, Prairie States came in eighth place as they only had two players who had previously played on an all star team.

This year Prairie States has 12 players on its team. Olson said she is looking forward to having the team back in the tournament and thinks her team can have a better result than last year.

“We’ve had to do a lot of rebuilding [since I took over],” Olson said. “Last year was difficult because we were a young team, so we didn’t win any games. … I’m very excited with the squad I have now because all of our programs post COVID were struggling with numbers, so we kind of had to rebuild all of our teams.

“… We lost a lot of experience in those couple of years because we lost players that knew how to play and the players we did have had very little game experience. … I’m really interested in what this squad can do and I think we certainly should come away with a couple of wins.”

There are 15 teams in the all star tournament. They are split into two divisions with one being called the All Stars and Small College All Stars. Prairie States will be in the Small College All Stars Division.

There are two players from SDSU on the team in Savannah Nordby and Olivia Nye. They are both juniors. Olson said SDSU rugby had a successful fall season and she is hoping that will continue as she tries to help grow the club teams in Brookings.

“We did pretty good,” Olson said. “We played some 7’s and then some combined, so I can’t give an exact record, but at SDSU we were just playing with our women and we did win some 7’s games. I saw a lot of improvement. Eventually my goal is to have 25 women [on the team] so we can do 15’s. We consistently had over 10 players at practice this fall and for us and rugby, that was a win because it’s been awhile since it’s been like that.

“… Across all of the teams [in the conference], we’re regaining the rugby culture that we lost because when of those COVID years. Besides being able to play the sport, they’re also seeing some of the other benefits because of rugby, and it’s usually the connections you make with other people.”

Prairie States is still looking for donations to help them pay for their trip to Atlanta and the games will begin on Jan. 25. The NCAA made a rule where each player has to have their own hotel room and Olson said that doubled the teams hotel costs.

If you want to help out Prairie States, their Venmo account is ps-rugby or you can email Olson at cady.olson@gmail.com. Olson said another one of her goals is to make sure that her players have an opportunity to continue to play sports.

“I know that as women get older, less and less of them continue to play sports. I want them to know that they can be a club player, but if they want to go higher, they have those opportunities. … I want to provide them with this opportunity, but when we have to pay so much for hotels, and then keep in mind that players are still paying for their own flights so we can pay for our hotels and food," Olson said. "Coaches don’t get paid [to coach]. Our one thing is our flights get paid. If anyone is interested, I want people to help out who believe in this experience as much as I do.”