Jewish rugby player Sarah Levy wins bronze medal in historic US victory

(JTA) — The US women’s rugby team stunned Australia to take bronze on Tuesday, delivering the first-ever Olympic medal to both the team and its Jewish forward, Sarah Levy.

The team, which beat Australia 14-12, had never made it to the semifinals in rugby sevens before Tuesday; before the bronze medal match, the team lost its semifinal game to New Zealand.

Levy, 28, appeared in three of the team’s six games, including as a starter in the quarterfinal against Great Britain, during which she played 11 of the match’s 14 minutes. She also started against Japan and came off the bench against France. She did not appear in the semifinal or bronze medal games.

Levy, a San Diego native who is making her Olympics debut in Paris, has been part of the US rugby program since 2018 after first trying the sport just four years earlier, during her freshman year of college at Northeastern University.

She told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency prior to the Olympics that she was immediately hooked on the sport.

“After that first game, it was done — I couldn’t not play,” Levy said. “I just fell in love with it right away. My dad had played growing up, so I always had a draw to it. But I didn’t know women could play until I got to college and there was a team there.”

Rugby in her blood

The sport runs deep in her family. Levy’s great-grandfather, Louis Brabow, played professionally and famously weighed whether to play a match in New Zealand on Yom Kippur in 1937. Brabow ultimately played, reasoning that the holiday had not yet begun in South Africa, where he was from.

Levy, who had also competed in the JCC Maccabi Games as a teenager, earned the medal alongside the US team’s Jewish assistant coach, former Olympic athlete Zack Test, who has also coached at the Maccabiah Games in Israel.

Test told JTA before the games that he and Levy share a special bond as two of the few Jews in rugby.

“Especially with what’s going on in Israel, we just look at each other and say, you know, what we’re doing is being proud Jews and we’re representing the tribe in a really special way,” Test said.

Another of Levy’s teammates, TikTok star Ilona Maher, has sparked Jewish fans’ curiosity in the past — the name Ilona derives from a word for “tree” in Hebrew — but is not Jewish.