Marana’s Alexsandria Gabbard on the Path to Future Olympics

The team that won the bronze medal — the U.S.’s first in the sevens category — won the hearts of many casual spectators.

However, there is nothing “casual” about Gabbard, a recent graduate of Marana High School, and rugby.

Gabbard, one of the country’s elite rugby players, was one of 26 Americans selected as part of Rugby USA’s under-18 squad that trained for two weeks in Cardiff, Wales. She is now in the pool of players for the World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

She already has something in common with this year’s Olympic athletes.

“Two days after the Wales trip, I saw Ilona Maher post on Instagram, and she had the exact same warm-up kit. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cool,’” Gabbard said. “We started watching their games in the airport on the way back to the States… and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we wore these jerseys. Like, I have this jersey in my suitcase right now.’ It’s so cool.”

Gabbard added that it is an honor to “share” the same uniforms and that it also “encourages” the players on the U18 team to know that if they work hard, they can be Olympians.

She’s a few years away from any of that happening. Wales was just one of the steps she took to put her in the running to carry the torch of what current U.S. Olympians have accomplished.

She played for the Rhinos Rugby Academy, a national development program, and competed in Austria at the United World Games and in South Africa at the Rugby 10s championship last November. She also played for the Tucson Thunderbirds.

Gabbard tried other sports, including basketball and track and field in high school, but always came back to rugby.

“I think it’s just the community at large,” Gabbard said.

“The rugby community is accepting and it makes you a better person. It’s not like, ‘Oh, you’re the opponent. We hate each other.’ It’s more like, ‘Hey, good game. Let’s go get pizza after.’ Or, ‘Let’s be friends and just bond over our love of rugby.’ It’s not just an Arizona thing, but it’s very international. Everyone supports each other on an international scale. It’s like, ‘Hey, we just want to be the best rugby players we can be, and that means playing tough competition and having tough games, but we’re still going to support each other and build each other up.’”

In Wales, Gabbard also trained with athletes from Scotland and the Netherlands. She was nervous at first because she had played sevens before, which is what is played in Arizona. There, she would train in 15s. Differences between the two styles of play include the number of athletes on the field or pitch and the length of the game. Sevens plays seven-minute halves, while 15s, which is played in college, plays 40-minute halves.

As with most things about rugby — including the rule changes every year — Gabbard adapted quickly. Watching a lot of rugby over the years helped, and as she said, in general, “The rugby IQ part came more naturally to me than it does to others.”

She has been involved with the game since a very young age and started playing when she was 7 years old.

You could say it’s a family affair. Her parents, Angela Wagner-Gabbard and Barry Gabbard, founded Marana Youth Rugby. Her older brother, Tyler Pedone, played at GCU. He’s nine years older than Aleksandra, and watching him gave her a sense of what high school and college games were like.

His younger brother Wyatt (15) is his training partner. They went to the gym together during the school year.

She also became involved as a coach and referee at the rugby club. These roles gave her a different perspective on the sport.

“Being able to step back from the game and say, ‘Hey, if I were a referee, these are the signals I would look for for penalties,’ makes me a more intuitive player,” Gabbard said. “As a referee, you have to take into account so many different environmental considerations and, like, say, ‘Was that tackle too high at the end of the tackle instead of the beginning of the tackle?’ It’s just keeping in mind a lot of rules that aren’t explicitly discussed as players.”

Outside of rugby, Gabbard’s ultimate dream is to become an astronaut. She will attend NAU this fall and the Naval Academy after that to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering.

His attraction to space may have been sparked by a great-uncle who helped build the Challenger and hearing him talk about “the aspects of testing, working in a group, and playing such a pivotal role in the future of space exploration.”

That spark was further ignited when she was 11 and went to space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. It meant even more to her because she had saved up all of her babysitting money — $1,000 — to attend.

“I absolutely loved it,” Gabbard said. “I met an astronaut and asked him about his experience. We learned about space exploration and the engineering aspects of spacecraft.”

For now, his attention is on the field and reaching his potential to represent his country at the World Cup and the Olympics, which some of his coaches — those who have trained Olympians — have said is within his reach.

“My goal with rugby is to become the best player I can be, and that means playing in the highest level of competition available to me,” Gabbard said. “I think it’s a definite possibility that I could be there one day (at the Olympics and World Cup) … Having all those support systems, and just that rugby community (where) we want everyone to be the best — across borders, religion, languages.”

“There’s this love for the game and the desire for everyone to be the best player they can be.”