CHULA VISTA, Calif. — After returning home from her final Olympics, Lauren Doyle had some time to collect herself before realizing she’d need to get a gym membership.
Lauren Doyle (6) and her U.S. teammates take the pitch to face Japan in an Olympic rugby pool-play match Thursday at the Budokan in Tokyo, in 2021.
The Eastern Illinois alum and Boody native hung up her cleats after a 12-year career with the Team USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team. That career came to a close with a bronze medal at this summer’s Paris Olympics. She’s the second Olympic medalist from Macon County, following Decatur’s Guy Carlton in weightlifting at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Doyle co-captained the Americans to their first-ever Olympic medal in rugby after she was a member of the team for each of the past three games. The Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 will be the first Olympic Games with rugby that Doyle won’t play in after she was on the U.S. team during the sport’s debut at the 2016 Olympics in Rio and also on the 2020 team in Tokyo. Doyle and Alex Kelter are the only two players to play in all three Olympics since rugby was introduced.
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Lauren Doyle takes a selfie at the Paris Olympics after winning a bronze medal in women’s rugby sevens.
The career with the U.S. program came after Doyle received a rugby scholarship following a four-year athletic career at Meridian that included volleyball, basketball, track and soccer — but not rugby. She joined the Eastern Illinois team and fit in instantly before catching on with the national team. She joined the American residency program following her national team debut in 2012.
Post-rugby, Doyle said she wants to transition to a corporate career. She joked that she wished she knew what she wanted to do after retirement with a job search getting underway, but now she’ll have a similar process to most post-college athletes who are updating resumes and looking out for new jobs.
One of those options Doyle is applying for is an internship program with Visa, which has a program in which former U.S. athletes have a two-year internship rotating through different departments. She wants to try that route before she considers jumping into coaching full-time.
“I’m not closing the door on coaching opportunities or individual skill sessions with groups — I think I would be open to doing that,” Doyle said. “Lightly interested in coaching, but not necessarily looking for that. I’m kind of looking to fully transition and close the door on this before I were to open it back up to rugby again.”
Lauren Doyle of USA goes to ground against France in a bronze medal match during the Rugby World Cup 7’s Championship held in Cape Town, South Africa, Sunday, Sept.11, 2022.
Doyle was able to travel the world playing for Team USA and will take her experiences and development from competing at the highest level of her sport for a decade into whatever she does next.
“Throughout my career I really found out who I was as a person and became way more comfortable with who I was instead of, you know, trying to be someone that I’m not,” Doyle said.
Doyle learned her leadership style as she became a captain for the U.S. team along with those medal-winning experiences she had after starting her career with the sport as a college student in Charleston.
“(It was) figuring out who I was and how to be confident and comfortable in my own skin,” Doyle said. “To be surrounded by really strong, powerful women is inspiring in itself, and to be able to think back onto all those memories where I’ve seen people grow or change in ways that could only happen in this environment is really cool.”
