Training Days

The saying goes, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans,” and Nicole Heavirland’s picture belongs next to the tapestry.

Heavirland, an Olympic hopeful for USA’s Rugby 7s squad, spent a good portion of her 24 years concentrating on becoming a Division I basketball player.

To no one’s surprise it happened.

After two seasons at Glacier High School and another two at Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, she landed a scholarship to Army, in West Point, New York.

One semester later she was done with hoops. Rugby had her heart for good, which is the short version of how the Whitefish native now works out full-time at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif.

The longer version: She’s been good at about any sport she tried, but especially rugby once she began playing in 2009.

She was so good that by 2010 she’d been invited to camps in Chula Vista. By 2012 she’d been selected to the U20s national team – she turned 17 in February that year – that went to the Nation’s Cup in England.

“Didn’t play much, but I learned a lot about rugby,” she said. “That’s when I first realized playing for the national team could be a thing. Pretty exciting.

“Then I parked it because Exeter didn’t have rugby.”

Not surprisingly this reputation on the pitch caught up to her at the U.S. Military Academy.

“I knew some of the rugby girls,” Heavirland said Friday from her family home on Whitefish Lake. She flashes a smile, and hints that Bill Le Clerc, Army’s rugby coach, called a full-court press. “They were trying to get me to come out there for a long time.”

When it happened, it was as comfortable as that favorite pair of jeans.

“I just felt welcomed right away,” Heavirland said. “They were excited; I was excited. Like, ‘These are my people. I’m weird, you’re weird, and we’re willing to tackle each other.’ ”

To get an idea how insular the rugby community is, take Dave Kenkel, the man who introduced Heavirland to the sport with the Black and Blues team he coached in Whitefish.

Kenkel got to know the Heavirlands back when both their kids started preschool – Nicole and her twin brother Ryan are the same age as Trevor Kenkel.

Dave’s wife is from Colombia; Nicole’s mom Carmen has Colombian heritage and New York roots.

“Our kids were instantly best buddies,” Kenkel said.

He coached football in Whitefish and Glacier and now coaches the Endicott College men’s rugby teams in Beverly, Massachusetts.

He moved his family to the East coast the same time Heavirland went to Exeter – about an hour’s drive away.

Then when she joined the rugby team at Army under Le Clerc, Kenkel thought, “I know that guy.” He and Le Clerc had competed against each other on select teams in the U.S. in the mid-90s.

“It’s pretty fortunate that she landed there,” Kenkel noted. “If she wasn’t going to play basketball, she would still have an excellent rugby coach in Bill.”

Kenkel didn’t just coach Heavirland in rugby: There was also Little Guy wrestling and football. On her Instagram there’s a picture of her, Ryan and Trevor Kenkel on a fourth-grade gridiron team, pads and all.

“I’d be one of the coaches in that picture,” the elder Kenkel said.

Lance Heavirland, Nicole’s father, is another. Kenkel called Nicole, who played running back, the star.

“She’s just a special kid,” he said. “Pretty good God-given talent and a tremendous work ethic. She’s turned herself into a world-class athlete.”

As Heavirland looks back she’s “sorry/not sorry” basketball didn’t work out. It helped get her Le Clerc’s tutelage. But in another way…

“I just wasn’t enjoying it,” she said. “It was a combination of a couple of things: West Point’s environment – the non-stop, ‘Do this, wear this, eat that, no free time.’… and then I experienced the culture in rugby and the culture in basketball and they’re way different.

“Basketball wasn’t what I was expecting and I didn’t feel like I belonged. So it was pretty easy to let that go and go play for Bill.”

What was tougher was, after the offer came to train full time in Chula Vista, leaving West Point. By then she’d led Army in scoring in the spring and fall seasons of 2015.

“Of course with West Point, it takes about a month to leave,” she said. “You don’t just say, ‘I wanna leave, bye.’ You have to have paperwork signed, you have to visit your counselors and teachers. And all of them asked, ‘Are you sure you want to leave?’”

If the “plebe” system at Army grated on Heavirland it’s hard to imagine she has it easier now.

Five days a week are regimented: After her morning coffee and “first breakfast,” Heavirland drives 25 minutes to the center, arriving by 7:30. She gets her right ankle taped – she has ligament damage because of basketball – and then heads to a team meeting, then practice, then a second breakfast, then a break, then a lifting session, then to the recovery room for an ice bath, then lunch, then another team meeting, and another practice session.

“Then recovery, then dinner, then home to watch film,” she said.

For every new player, it starts the same – they’re ready to go at 7:30 a.m. and racked out 12 hours later.

“Every single night you’re just exhausted,” Heavirland said. “It’s such a change mentally and physically. Your body just needs that amount of sleep. I went through it; everybody goes through it.”

And she loves it.

There are 22 athletes vying for 13-14 spots on the Rugby 7s team that will head to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in July 2020. That’s the goal.

But first the team heads to New Zealand at the end of January, and Australia in February, and Hong Kong in April, then Canada and Paris in May.

Each time the team will pare down to a traveling squad of 13 or so players. No spot is guaranteed.

Chris Brown, the team’s coach the past 18 months, has overseen a jump in program success.

Heavirland had been a captain on the team; that honor has since been rotated out.

The team just competed in Cape Town, South Africa before getting a holiday break; a 15-14 loss to Canada in the quarterfinals ended that tournament. Yet the team is ranked third internationally after the finest season in its history.

“He (Brown) has really flipped our program around in terms of team culture and unity,” Heavirland said. “We’re the same athletes we were a couple years ago, but more united and more successful.”

Rugby 7s is a dialed-down (from 15 players) version of the game but more explosive and fast-paced, with matches that don’t last a quarter of an hour. The style seems more suitable for Olympic coverage.

“It’s physical, hard-hitting and I think it’s better for TV production, you know?” Heavirland said.

The hitting and the camaraderie keep Heavirland on task.

She remembers her first girls’ high school match in 2010, played in the snow in Hamilton. Afterward there was a function with the other team.

Not 10 years later she’s hob-knobbed with players from all over the globe.

“I know the Canada girls, I know the Australian girls, the New Zealand girls,” she said. “We’ll go to war for 14 minutes and after those matches… you’ll have a meal or share drinks.

“That happened with my first rugby game, and it’s still happening.”