I began my rugby career at four years old and since then it has become one of the driving forces in helping me become the young woman I am today. For much of my youth career I participated as the only girl in the program which became exceedingly more difficult as I grew because I was shy and often very quiet. However this did not deter me from becoming a respectable rugby player where I was able to break barriers and continue my career longer than initially thought possible. Thanks to rugby I was able to find myself and so when I reached the time where I had to pick what I was going to do for my Girl Scout Gold Award project I naturally chose rugby as my topic. My goal was to make rugby accessible for other young girls so hopefully they would be able to take away at least a fraction of what I was able to from my rugby experience. I struggled a lot growing up with self- esteem and finding my place in this fast paced world, which gave me a lot of anxiety about my future and growing up my biggest battlefield was the rugby pitch. I was the only girl on my team and i was constantly being reminded of that, whether is was that I was to slow (which I wasn’t) or I couldn't catch (which I could), there was always an excuse to why they wouldn't pass my the ball even if I was exactly where I was supposed to be, but the worst part had to be them never speaking to me outside of the occasional formal greeting of a “hi Michaela” or ‘’bye Michaela”, which gave me a lot of time to think and focus on the instructions given by the coach. So while all the boys were messing around and not paying attention to what we were being taught, I was dialed in and absorbed everything I could, leading me to realize I would have to work ten times harder than every boy on my team because unlike them I had something to prove. However the hardest part had to be them not speaking to me, I don’t know if it was my young mind or their ignorance to my cootie status, but those boys never spoke to me, at practice, at games, at team events, no where. But early on I figured out in all the noise I have found my peace in rugby, never questioning where I am supposed to be and always having a place, which I consider one of the greatest gifts in life. People spend their whole lives looking for that feeling and I have somehow been given it. However I do not wish to understate the journey to get to this point where I love rugby as much as I do now. Rugby is my constant which makes me all the more grateful I get to play it in college.

I owe my life to rugby, because for me it is not simply just a sport, but an irreplaceable part of my life. My parents met after a rugby game and i have basically been on the pitch since I could crawl. I quite literally have never been able to comprehend the idea of family without being reminded of the amazing people rugby has brought me. I started my personal rugby career at the age of four and I played co-ed for 10 years. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the amazing coaches who supported me through the trials and tribulations of often being the only girl on the team. These same coaches supported my decision to push back on rules that stopped girls from playing after a certain age which eventually led to a rule change that allowed all girls to continue to play co-ed until high school. Rugby has always been a constant in my life that has pushed me to be better, which made it natural for me to make it the focal point of my Girl Scout Gold award Project. I chose to make my project tackle the problems surrounding women's sports, specifically in the sport of rugby as it’s surrounded by a considerable amount of stigma. My goal, with the help of Pasadena Rugby, was to create an environment where girls could try rugby in a safe and enjoyable way. I did this with the help of my rugby family by hosting clinics and writing, filming, and producing a series of videos that made rugby easier to understand, which could be found on my website (michaelaaston.com). I was also able to create a plan and set up a support system for these girls through the collection of donations over the course of my project. I have known I wanted to make this my project since I was younger, as it was a known fact that you are supposed to choose something you love, and there’s nothing I love more than rugby. I am not going to lie and say the project was a breeze and I completed it with no setbacks, because that is so far from the truth. My project faced issues from figuring out the best way to get the girls excited to being forced to pivot the tail end of it because of the Altadena fires. After all the work I did, I was asked whether I considered my project successful and I was proud to say it was. I said this because one of the girls who came to all my clinics ended up coming out to play with the youth team for their season. She was the only girl, just like I was, but with the support system I helped create, she played with more confidence than I did and today she is a pretty good rugby player. I am now planning to attend Drury University in Missouri, far from my home in Southern California, with the plan to play rugby. In all honesty if I wasn’t playing rugby in college, I don’t think I would have had the confidence to venture 1600 miles from home. I’m also fulfilling the dream of a little girl who never thought of collegiate rugby as an option for her. My plan when I get there is to help the coach grow youth rugby in her community using what I have learned from doing it already. This scholarship would allow me to focus more of my attention on these goals, allowing me to help more girls and reach more communities.