Alley Mitchell, head coach of the Elon women's club rugby team, has been awarded a 2020 Premiership Rugby Scholarship and will travel to England in April to take part in high-level coaching training from some of the sport's top trainers.
For more than 25 years, rugby has been an important part of Alley Mitchell’s life. From her first time playing coed rugby at her Canadian primary school to her current role as head coach of the Elon women’s club rugby team, Mitchell has always found a home in the sport.
“It really is a source of empowerment, and it’s a place for everybody,” Mitchell said. “It doesn’t matter how big you are, how small you are, how fit you are – there’s a place in rugby for you.”
Now, after eight years of coaching the sport she loves, Mitchell is hoping to pass on her passion for rugby to the next generation of players qnd a new opportunity will allow her to do so at an even higher level.
Mitchell is one of 26 rugby coaches from 19 states cross the U.S. to be awarded the Premiership Rugby Scholarship, which funds a week-long visit to the United Kingdom to experience life as coach of a professional rugby club.
In April, the coaches will visit four high-level rugby clubs – Bath Rugby, Bristol Bears, Gloucester Rugby and Worcester Warriors – attend two Gallagher Premiership Rugby fixtures and take part in tailored coaching sessions organized by Premiership Rugby and USA Rugby. Coaches will learn about new coaching techniques, nutrition, strength, conditioning and ways to use the sport to promote social change while instilling its core values in players and fans.
“It’s incredibly exciting for these individuals to experience what is so much more than coach education, but also a valuable cultural exchange,” said USA Rugby Director of Training and Education Kenny Forehand.
Mitchell had applied for the scholarship twice before, but had not been selected as a scholarship recipient. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime, she gave it another try, and her video essay impressed the scholarship’s selection board enough to earn her a spot in the program’s fourth cohort.
“The coaching opportunities and the talent pool in the U.K. and overseas is completely different from what we have here in the U.S. because rugby came from the U.K.,” Mitchell said. “So the knowledge and everything that you can gain from learning there is incredible. We’re in our infancy here in the U.S. in comparison to where they are, so that’s my main reason for wanting to do this.”
For Mitchell, the opportunity to share her rugby knowledge with Elon students is something she has taken seriously since joining the women’s club rugby program in 2018. She has led her Elon teams through several regional competitions and in January took a group of players to St. Petersburg, Florida, to compete in the National Small College Rugby Organization Women’s 7s All-Star Championship.
Mitchell hopes the Premiership Rugby Scholarship will only enhance the lessons she teaches as she continues to use the sport to share messages of encouragement with her players.
“One of my principles of coaching is that it’s a source of teaching people – especially women and younger women – that it’s OK to be strong, it’s OK to be tough, it’s OK to be outside of the box of what people view as femininity. It’s important to have that empowerment,” Mitchell said.
And as players graduate from Elon and move on from the program, she hopes they leave with a love of the sport and the same feeling of community that rugby gives her.
“Whether they go on to keep playing rugby in their lives, giving them kind of a place to call home or family is something that I cherish and something that I want to give them,” she said.