This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.

Soloau Te’o knew a shot at a national title was possible.

“We’ve been working to get into the Final Four for a couple years,” said Te’o, who plays for the Utah Vipers women’s rugby team. “We made it pretty close.”

The best the Vipers had done during Te’o’s 11 years with the team, though, was breaking into the round of 16 at various levels of national competition. But finally, 16 years after the club was created, and having ascended to the highest division of club rugby in the United States, everything seemed to be coming together for a championship season.

In 2024, the Vipers went undefeated in Rocky Mountain Rugby league play and swept the Gulf Coast Super Regional, earning a spot in the USA Club Rugby Division 1 semifinals. After a commanding win in the semis, the opportunity to take the national title was finally within reach.

But that’s where their momentum stalled out.

Now, Te’o and her team have another chance. They’ll face the Houston Athletic Rugby Club on Friday in Indianapolis. A win there will set the Vipers up for a potential championship rematch with the Northern Virginia Women’s Rugby Club, which will face the Minneapolis Metropolis Valkyries in its semi-final match.

And the way Te’o sees it, her team has “no choice but to win.”

‘Just trying to learn the game’

Head coaches David Shelledy and Olive Ahotaeiloa founded the Vipers in 2009, aiming to give teenage girls in and around South Jordan a shot at playing a sport that most high schools in Utah don’t sponsor. After a couple years, though, the coaches realized their team was the last one many of those girls would play for.

“There’s a lot of them that don’t go to college, and so they can’t play on a college team,” Shelledy said. “And the younger girls were done with high school and they wanted to keep playing.”

So, Shelledy said, the organization decided to shift its demographic to help adult women keep the sport in their lives. While many of the team’s players have athletic backgrounds, some didn’t grow up playing the game much, if at all.

“It was a new sport to me,” said Tamasailau Tavita, who joined the Vipers in 2014. “I didn’t even know there was even a D1 level. I was just trying to learn the game, and that was my main focus.”

Tavita said she didn’t even consider that playing in a national championship could be a possibility back then. And as recently as two seasons ago — when both the Vipers’ senior team and its D2 affiliate, the Salt City Slugs, went winless in Rocky Mountain Rugby play — it didn’t seem like it was in the cards.

But last year something shifted.

The Vipers outscored their opponents by an average of 33 points during the regular 2024 season. That energy continued in the semifinal match, where 18 seconds after kicking off to the Pittsburgh Forge, Utah stripped the ball at the 22-meter line, and Vaimalo Manuo took a rumbling run through the center of the pitch for the game’s first score. The Vipers never trailed, and their 33-21 victory earned them a spot in their first national title game against Northern Virginia.

(Payton Mckee) Apa'au Mailau of the Utah Vipers, left, takes on a player from the Seattle Rugby Club in a match on April 27, 2025.

‘It sucked, to be honest’

Although the Vipers had overpowered their competition in the regular season, they’d picked up some injuries along the way — and their semifinal game brought even more.

“It sucked, to be honest,” Tavita said. “We didn’t have a full squad at the time, and a few of us were playing a little injured because of our first game.”

The Vipers went into the title game in Round Rock, Texas, with two fewer players on their bench than their opponents. Tough luck came down on them again in the 20th minute, when Breauna Nez was helped off the field by team trainers.

Even with short numbers, Tavita said, “I just think everybody went out and gave it their all.”

But that wasn’t enough. The Vipers didn’t put any points on the board until the final minutes of the first half. Another 40 minutes of rugby later, they’d fallen 44-12.

(Nahe Kahala-Giron) The Utah Vipers women's rugby team celebrates its win against the Seattle Rugby Club at the Pacific Super Regional Championship on April 27, 2025.

‘It was like a 360’

Tavita said the shortfall in the championship finals was hard — especially because the title wasn’t the only thing on the line in competition.

“A lot of us are paying to play,” she said. “We have a few sponsors, but they’re like sponsoring gear, not so much like funds — and that’s where we struggle a lot, is funds to raise as a team.”

That hurdle aside, though, Tavita said things will be different when her team arrives in Indianapolis.

In the midst of a national spike in players for USA Club Rugby, the Vipers’ team leaders said they now have the numbers they need. Tavita thinks the team’s “hunger” has changed since they came so close to the national title and walked away empty-handed. And Te’o agreed.

“Everybody’s mindsets just kind of changed. It was like a 360 immediately after that loss,” she said. “It was like, ‘Let’s just get back into that mode, get in the gym, do what we got to do on our offseason.’”

Shelledy noticed the change, too. Now, he said, his players understand what it takes to make it to and win the finals. “We just have a really good team this year, a good solid team going into it,” he said. “They’re excited, and they’re really driven to get there, so I think they’ll take it this year.”

(Courtesy Utah Vipers) The Utah Vipers are an all-women rugby team, ranging in age from 18 to 52, according to Head Coach David Shelledy. The team was established 16 years ago to give players the opportunity to play at a higher level when they could no longer compete for school teams.

‘Rugby is there’

Te’o said it was hard to come home without the win — and so this year, she said, her team is planning on “taking everything.”

But for these women, it’s not just about the title and the trophy.

“Rugby [is] for everybody. It doesn’t matter your age, doesn’t matter your size, doesn’t matter what you look like, what job you have, whatever,” Te’o said. “We want it to stick around forever, and this is our way of contributing to the sport.”

Te’o said many of the women on the team are moms, and almost all of the players have other full-time jobs. For many of them, rugby is an outlet to take time for themselves and find support in a tight-knit sisterhood.

“Where life gets in the way, rugby is there,” she said. “I hope it just means that we can grow the sport, so more and more people will look into it, look into us, and want to participate, and want to bring the same thing that we bring to our community.”

Tavita also said that winning the national title is, in no small part, about showing other women in Utah what’s possible.

“The bigger picture is recruiting more and more women and younger women,” she said. “There’s so many. There’s so much talent. They can carry on the legacy, as some of us vets are able to just either coach or step down. I mean, it’s carrying on the legacy of the Vipers.”

The Utah Vipers are soliciting donations to support their travel to Indianapolis via Venmo (@ladyvipersrugby) and Cashapp ($ladyvipersrugby). 

Elle Crossley wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah for a capstone course focused on women’s sports. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Glendale Middle School field is alive with cheers and shouts while the Majestics Girls Rugby Club is hard at work. Their spring season is underway, so even as the sun beats down, they’re not holding back.

Practice isn’t easy. Rugby is an intense contact sport. That means sprinting, tackling, dodging and scrummaging are all regular drills on the pitch as the girls prepare to take on teams around Utah and compete in national tournaments.

Majestics head coach Angela Tuiaki started the club for high school girls six years ago alongside her sister Jen Sika. The team has seen massive improvement since its start, according to Tuiaki, taking home state and national championship titles. But in the past few years, she said the sport as a whole has grown, too. She’s noticed more positive attention on women’s rugby than ever before, and she largely credits that to one specific name: Ilona Maher.

“There's rugby, the word rugby, and then there's Ilona’s name next to it. That's how people understand it,” Tuiaki said. “If her name is not next to rugby, people will be like, ‘Wait, what's rugby?’ Well, you know, Ilona, and they're like, ‘Oh yes!’”

Angela Tuiaki addresses the Majestics team following afternoon practice. She started the club six years ago with her sister to create a place for girls who don’t fit in other sports.(Elle Crossley, KUER)

Ilona Maher is a rugby star turned influencer with millions of followers across Instagram and TikTok. That’s more than any other rugby player in the world — man or woman. She helped lead the USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team to win a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Beyond her athletics, her funny, genuine and inspiring brand has attracted a massive fanbase.

“I love that she goes out there and that she's not afraid of what the world thinks, but she's sure of who she is,” Tuiaki said.

Maher is strong and proud of it. The Vermont native’s body is muscular, and she’s used her platform to spread love for bodies of all shapes and sizes.

“This body is amazing and it does amazing things for me, and there isn’t one body type for female athletes or for women,” Maher said in a 2022 TikTok. “So, today, I want you all to look in the mirror and appreciate what you got, realize what it does for you, and remember you are beautiful.”

Like other star athletes like Caitlin Clark, Mia Hamm and Billie Jean King, Ilona Maher has transformed the landscape of her sport.

Following her Olympic medal last summer, USA Youth and High School Rugby reported a 19% jump in girls registered for the 2024-2025 season. Now, girls make up 40% of school-age rugby players.

Young Utah athletes like 17-year-old Marley Larkin, captain of the Majestics, say they can feel the difference. Larkin said the influencer has made the sport more inclusive.

“She's brought a lot of great respect and confidence for body shapes and body sizes, especially because every body kind of goes to a different position,” Larkin said. “ You need all these different body sizes, shapes to complete the rugby team.”

 The Majestics Girls Rugby Club is based in Salt Lake City’s Glendale neighborhood. The team has brought home the Utah State Championship title the past three years. (Elle Crossley, KUER)

Eseta Moala is in the eighth grade and plays for the Layton Christian Academy’s girls rugby club, just north of the Majestics. She said Maher taught her to use her strength to her advantage.

“At first, I was embarrassed because of my size. Like, what are they gonna think? But she didn't really care about her size,” said Eseta Moala, whose sister Luisa plays on the same team. “[Maher] just decided to play, and now she it's her beauty. That's how she stands out.”

The girls’ mother, Victoria Moala, noticed a difference in how the positive role model helped boost her daughters’ self-esteem. And as a Polynesian woman, that impact is even more significant.

“My girls, they're Tongan, and so their bodies are built a little bit different from their peers,” Victoria Moala said.

She said her daughters previously struggled with body image. Even though Maher is not Polynesian herself, Victoria Moala noted the rugby star has taught her daughters to build their confidence through the sport.

“Seeing her, what she's accomplished, gives my daughter someone to look up to,” Victoria Moala said. “Just using their background as Polynesians, to be able to push that forward and represent who their true identity is being Polynesian, and then to take advantage, take that onto the field and be proud of themselves.”

Sisters Eseta (Right) and Luisa Moala (Left) play on the Layton Christian Academy’s girls club rugby team. They both say they look up to Maher and are inspired by her confidence. (Elle Crossley, KUER)

Utah has the nation’s third-highest population of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders behind Hawaii and Alaska, according to a Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute analysis of census data. Angela Tuiaki said the Majestics are an almost all-Polynesian team, and Maher has shown them how rugby can create opportunities for their future.

“They're starting to make that connection, ‘I could be up there. I could bring a platform to actually show the world who I am, too,’” Tuiaki said.

Some of the Majestics players are starting to get that recognition. Marley Larkin has committed to Dartmouth College in 2025 to play Division 1 rugby and continue her education. She wants to keep the cycle of inspiration going.

“It's not about us, it's about the community. The people around looking even at a bigger scale to see, to have other Poly girls, other Pacific Islander Girls, look at our team and know it's possible,” Larkin said. “‘Oh, I can do it too. They can do it, I can do it as well.’”

Elle Crossley is an intern with Amplify Utah and KUER covering the Utah State Legislature and other local news.

Salt Lake City has a large recovery community, with even more communities hidden within it. For many, like Clay Josewski, a former addict and now staff member at The Other Side Academy, music has become an impactful and transformative experience.

Josewski said he now aims to spread his message of a lifestyle change through “sober hip-hop” under the name Zevskee. Over the last four years, Josewski has transformed his past, drug-induced, freestyle sessions, into projects that invoke positive change.

His journey to recovery, he said, started in 2017, when at 29 years old, the police raided his motorhome and busted him for a string of burglaries he had committed. He calls it his “God shot” because it led him to change his life.

“That was exactly what I needed in that moment to get my life together,” Josewski said.

Enter the Other Side Academy, a free life skills school for adults who have struggled with addiction, incarceration, and homelessness. In exchange for a possible 20-year prison sentence, Josewski became a student at the academy.

“Really just to beat a Prison sentence, I went to a program to get my life together, not knowing that my life would turn out the way it has.”

Josewski rediscovered hip-hop through a lens of sobriety at the academy. Now, as program staff, he weaves it into performances at the Other Side and for the broader recovery community. Events like Summer Jams and Recovery Days encourage people to express creativity and build a community with others working on sobriety. Salt Lake Recovery Days will be held on September 14th, 2024, at Jordan Park, and Summer Jams is an annual concert hosted by The Other Side Academy.

“I remember just sitting down and like just rapping about like integrity, and rapping about having accountability, and all the good things that The Other Side Academy was trying to teach me…and we sang it, and everybody like loved it.”

Fit To Recover, for example, promotes a healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition, creative arts, and service. On Wednesday nights, the group hosts an open mic night for anyone to come and share music, poetry, comedy, and stories in a safe and accepting space. Josewski said he has found people there who he looks up to because of how they empower others.

“Those are my people, right, so there’s no better crowd to share your music with than people that are like supportive of what you’re doing and get it.”

One of the most important things for people in recovery is to be surrounded by a supportive community, said Phil Millerberg, who works full-time at a local treatment center. Millerberg is a co-founder of Own It SLC, a performing arts event and podcast. Through these events, Millerberg said he has gotten to know Josewski and many others.

“There wasn’t really any artists being empowered at that time… we found a need for that, so we just started putting on shows ” he said, giving people a place to feel accepted and do what they love productively.

Like Millerberg, Josewski said because so many people have helped him, he wants to give back in any way he can.

“Saving lives is the new drug,” he said.

He now writes and produces music with Bronson Wagstaff, a local musician known as Rufio. They perform at recovery events around the city while learning from one another and growing their skills and morals.

Josewski shared his story this semester with University of Utah journalism students Katie Bennett and Malcolm Swope as part of an audio storytelling project with KRCL, Amplify Utah, and The Other Side Academy.