Do you believe in miracles?
Team USA’s women’s rugby sevens team pulled off a massive upset of Australia to win the bronze medal at the Paris Olympics onཧ Tuesday, and did so in unbelievable fashion.
Trailing 12-7 in the final seconds, Team USA’s Alex “Spiff” Sedrick br🌸oke two tackles, absolutely trucking an Australian defender in the process, and proceeded to dart 94 yards for a buzzer-beating try.
Sedrick made the c🥃onversion kick after the score to cement Team USA’s 14-12 victory, beating the 2016 champion Aussies and winning USA Rugby its first-ever medal in sevens competition.
“We knew they were going 🅺to kick deep, being ahead in points, so we just trusted our framework and power zone, we just had to go for it,” Seꦬdrick said.
Not that her teammates wer𝓀e expecting that kind of result.
“I was kind of like, ‘What is this? No wa♊y?’ It was crazy because I was like, ‘No, there’s no way this is happening,’ ” Team USA’s Ilona Maher told reporters in France of Sedrick’s winning try. “And then for her to have to make the kick as well, and she’s not our kicker.”
The victory l🌃eft teammate Sammy Sullivan in tears, while burgeoning star Maher raised her arms in jubilation — as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” played over the Stade de France speakers with more than 60,000 in attendance.
“It’s really huge, I don’t even know if it has fully soaked in beating the best team in the worl😼d for a medal,” coach Emilie Bydwell said. “To do it in such an excited fashion, with such belief, that has to be one of the best moments of the Olympics.”
Sedrick’s꧙ pivotal play was her “trying to𓆉 channel my big girls. Ilona Maher. I’m just trying to be like her,” she said of her famously stiff-arm-dealing teammate.
Sedrick, 26, pl♔ayed collegiate rugby at Life University, a school in Georgia that specializes in training chiropractors, and won the MA Sorensen Award as the country’s best rugby player in 2020.
She has been a part o🙈f the USA rugby team since 2021, and was part of their gold medal-winning team at th🧸e Pan American Games in 2023.
Sedrick also scored a 🐲try in Team USA’s victory over Brazil earlier in the Olympics.
Tuesday marked the first tim🌌e the United States had ever medaled in women’s rugby — a moment that was not lost on the American side.
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“We’re really trying to raise up rugby in💮 the U.S., especial🦂ly in the women’s game, so hopefully this will inspire someone to pick up a rugby ball,” Sedrick said.
The women’s rugby꧒ team had become social media darlings even before their bronze medal performance.
Earlier this week, retired Eagles offensive lineman Jason Kelce arm-wrestled rugby player Nicole Heavirland, and was spottedꦑ having a lighthearted conversation with Maher.
“I wanted to be good at social media — and I do a lot of social media — but also be a very good rugby player,” Maher said. “It was important for me to show I am funny but I’m also the real deal and I also a very good rugby player. And so it was important for me to show that you can be anything. You can be beast, bea🤡uꦡty, brains.”
In the gold medal match, Stacy Waaka dove into the corner to clinch back-to-back Olympic titles for New Zealand with a 19-ꦺ12 win over Canada. New Zealand had defeated the U.S. in the semifinals, 24-12, earlier in the day.
