Get to know Naya Tapper; she is a household name in U.S. rugby. The U.S. Women’s Sevens team has appointed her as its co-captain for the upcoming Olympics, and she will retire after the Paris games.
As retirement beckons, Tapper, nicknamed “Naya On Fiya,” may go out with a gold medal. In a comment, she noted that preparing for her “second Olympics as co-captain while at the same time planning my transition from the sport [has been] a whirlwind of trying to make sure I enjoy these last moments with my team while juggling the importance of performing to a gold medal standard and making sure I have a job after all this,” the Guardian noted.
Tapper first got into rugby at the University of North Carolina, where she joined a club team on campus. Before that, she was an All-American track and field star at West Mecklenburg High School.
According to her, she joined rugby for fun, but little did she know that she was going to make a career out of it. “Being a competitive person, I started to crave that competition again,” she said, according to WCNC.
Her performance was good enough to warrant a call-up to the USA Women’s Sevens team in 2016, and she has since been one of the team’s best players.
“I’m really known for my stiff arm and my speed around the corner,” Tapper said. “I’ve developed to become a lethal weapon on defense as well, being able to get the ball back so that we can play attack off the field.”
She was part of the U.S. team that went to Tokyo in the last Summer Olympics and finished sixth. Today, she leads the team to the Paris Olympics as a co-captain. And according to her, she has an unfinished business.
“I’m most looking forward to getting my Olympic redemption. We want to get that gold medal,” Tapper said. “That’s everybody’s goal. But that’s something we’ve invested a lot of time, heart, and tears in. I’m hoping that we can get our redemption there.”
Commenting on her captaincy, her mother Juanita Nater-Tapper noted, “It’s just wonderful, it makes me tear up.”
“I’m very proud of her.”
