Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
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10-21-2025 By Pearl Ashton
'I think we deserve to start telling our own narrative rather than let others do it for us.'
Speakers at censorship ‘teach in’ at Weber State encounter rain outside, restrictions indoors
10-04-2025 By Alfonso Rubio, Jared Mitchell, James Gordon, and Kyle Greenawalt
The “uncensored version” of the Unity Conference began outdoors. When weather forced participants inside, they were told to adhere to the limits of Utah’s anti-DEI law.
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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.
Diego Cortez has a deep relationship with tattoos.
Inked artwork on his body has played a major role in his life, he said, from his incarceration to his current association as a staff member with The Other Side Academy, a free life skills school for adults who have struggled with addiction, incarceration and homelessness.
Cortez said he was 14 when he got his first tattoo.
"I was an ex-gang member, so naturally, I sought to express myself, signaling to others my identity," he said.
From then on, each new tattoo marked something happening in his life. Cortez's progression with tattoos, from his gang days to his present academy position, shows how body art may change an individual’s identity.
Shortly after receiving his first tattoo, Cortez moved to Salt Lake City’s Glendale neighborhood. Seeking acceptance in school, a teenage Cortez found himself drawn into gangs. Years later, his involvement in a firearms crime as a result of this association ultimately earned him a 10-year prison sentence.
Instead, Cortez found the Other Side, which gave him an opportunity to take another path and change his life, he said.
“If I was out there banging for the wrong reasons, why can’t I switch my mentality?” he said. “All it is the commitment, the loyalty, the drive for the Other SideA Academy. Why can’t I bang for TOSA now?”
The academy emerged a place to transform his life, he said, and he was determined to remove the tattoos that represented his gang affiliation. He now wanted the ink, he said, to have a more defined and positive significance.
"On my left arm, I have a forest of trees growing around my whole forearm,” he said. “And those trees, to me, it’s like you’re burying your past and letting something else grow.”
Cortez said he now wants his tattoos to represent good things in his life, like the new warrior band during a February visit to Neon Tattoo in Midvale.
"I want to get meaningful stuff, so it’s a warrior band of the Aztecs,” he said. “I love culture, especially my culture.”
Fellow Other Side graduates, Nick Henderson and Johnathan Pangburn, said they, too, have embarked on similar tattoo journeys.
“Being at [the academy] opened my eyes to the realization that everything I believed in prison was merely a false belief," Henderson said.
His tattoos mirrored that, he said.
Pangburn said his tattoos reflected his earlier experiences idolizing troubled and violent individuals, including white supremecists.
"It provided me with a false sense of pride – a pride I had never experienced before," he said.
All three many, and others like the at the academy, said they have been removing or reworking several of the tattoos that represented a different time of their lives and no longer align with who they are today.
Cortez said removing his tattoos – including a demon tattooed on his neck that was meant to serve as intimidation to other gangs – allows him to rewrite his journey and better reflect his life now.
"I had to confront the falsehoods I told myself," he said. "Once I was able to see the truth, with the help of others who’ve been in my shoes, it made it easier to take this opportunity and get this off my neck."
Getting rid of this specific tattoo, Cortez said, helped him let go of his past. He now stands as a staff member of The Other Side, embracing his newfound life and motivating others with his inspirational story.
Cortez shared his story this semester with University of Utah journalism students Eseudel Jang and Crystal Fraughton as part of an audio storytelling project with KRCL and Amplify Utah.
