Last Friday, Emilie Bydwell '08 suited up at 7 p.m. in her Brown hockey uniform to take on the Harvard Crimson. On Saturday morning, she boarded a flight headed to San Diego for the rugby women's national U-23 Developmental Sevens Camp.
While it was unfortunate that the Bears came up three goals short against the No. 1 hockey team in the country, today Bydwell is hoping to hear the good news that she will be scoring tries for the No. 1 rugby team in the country this weekend.
She has been playing rugby nonstop since Saturday, lifting and practicing for almost six hours per day, hoping to earn a spot on the 12-woman roster that will compete in the San Diego Invitational on Thursday and Friday.
After this weekend, she will be training with and playing on the U.S. Fifteens team in San Diego for another week, in preparation for the World Cup.
"(The trip) is going really well," Bydwell said from San Diego. "I know most of the players from before," she added, citing when she played with the U.S. team in August and in December in England, while also playing for the Developmental team in New Zealand for two and a half weeks last summer.
Coming off a magnificent fall where Brown secured the No. 1 ranking, which it still holds, Bydwell was named the 2007 College Player of the Year by erugbynews.com - the reigning authority on U.S. rugby - after earning a first team All-American nomination and scoring over 100 points.
"I remember someone texting me and I looked online," recalled Bydwell. "I wasn't really expecting it, but it's a pretty good testament to how good Brown's gotten. This year we've really pulled together, and we can really compete on a national level."
Women's Rugby Head Coach Kerrissa Heffernan praised Bydwell's effort to get to this milestone.
"She's pretty dreamy because of her size and her work rate," Heffernan said. "She can maintain a high level of work around the field."
To prepare for these two weeks, Bydwell has had to complete three times the practices of most athletes every day. Before classes started this semester, she was practicing twice a day with the hockey team while doing her rugby running workouts in the evening. She not only has had to prepare for the quicker game of the sevens camp (where only seven players per side are on the pitch at one time), but she also has to keep up her strength for the fifteens team for next week.
"If you're conditioned enough to play sevens you can play fifteens," Bydwell said. "The (fifteens) strength is different ... but they do complement each other."
Heffernan has helped Bydwell with her training plan, taking into account the next two weeks and the rest of the collegiate season.
"We want to make sure she has the speed to compete at that (national) level, but at the same time I can't have her coming back into a lull," Heffernan said. "Em has to do tons of footwork (when she comes back), but it's truly amazing what's she's doing, developing all this speed for sevens and then two days after, looking for a different speed at fifteens."
Now she has classes to attend on top of two daily practices, but Bydwell knows how to work her schedule.
"I just sleep a lot and always take Sundays off," Bydwell said. "I need one day off so my body doesn't freak out. I try to stretch a lot."
Her journey as a two-sport athlete started in high school where she helped start a rugby team in her hometown of Montreal, Quebec.
After her freshman hockey season at Brown, she tried out for the rugby team as "something to do in the spring." Bydwell stuck with it, and then two years ago the team fundraised and undertook a career-changing trip to Uganda over spring break.
"A big turning point was the trip to Uganda," Bydwell said. "That was a level of rugby I hadn't been exposed to before. That's when I really realized I really enjoyed it."
Joining the team in Uganda was one of her role models, Stephanie Bruce '04.
"She was probably the first really good rugby player to tell me, 'Hey, you're really good, you should try to play more rugby,' " Bydwell said. "She actually taught me a lot, and she's a really good sevens player."
Heffernan echoed her sentiments on Bruce, the team's first All-American.
"Em was in awe of her," Heffernan said of Bruce. "She was the first to push our program forward, gain credibility, and she could singlehandedly win games."
Bruce has played professionally since graduating, and Bydwell hopes to continue in her footsteps.
"All I'm really planning on doing is playing," Bydwell said. "I'm going to look for jobs where good rugby teams are (after graduation) and find a job that will allow me to train."
She's applying for several research and teaching programs, and she wants to try to play both sevens and fifteens programs as much as she can.
Attending the camp was an "amazing opportunity," but Bydwell is still doing her work to finish her human biology degree in May. In December, she traveled to England with the fifteens team and had to make arrangements to "study abroad."
"My professors were awesome," Bydwell said. "I don't know if I'd (have) been able to do that at another place besides Brown."
After her San Diego tour is complete, she will return to help the hockey team in the playoffs before completing her final collegiate rugby season.
"It's so awesome right now (having the opportunity to play both sports). I really can't ask for much more," Bydwell said.
