Rugby Equivalent Of A 99-Yard Hail Mary Wins Women’s USA Rugby Team Their First Ever Olympic Medal As Time Expires

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Anyone else glued to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games? It’s been great to wake up and have high-stakes, meaningful sports on television pretty much around the clock. Not only does this every-four-years event give the world’s best athletes a chance to go for gold, it also gives us regular people a chance to go ALL IN on sports we’d normally never watch.

Like rugby.

The football-adjacent sport is incredibly popular elsewhere in the world, but here in America, we seem to prefer the NFL. But that hasn’t stopped our women’s national rugby team from becoming a formidable force and competing their hearts out in Paris. Going into this year’s games, the U.S. Women’s Rugby Sevens team had never medaled before.

That all changed with their impressive, leave-it-all-out-there performance in this year’s olympic tournament. In case you missed it, the USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team took home the Bronze trophy after pulling off an incredible upset against a powerhouse Australia squad.

How did they pull off the upset? I’m glad you asked.

With time ticking down, and Australia up 5 points, possession flipped over to Team U.S.A. They had a mere 23 seconds to go the entire length of the pitch. For those not familiar with rugby, that’s the equivalent of being backed up to your own end zone and needing a hail mary touchdown to win.

And guess what? The Americans somehow pulled it off, thanks to this remarkable breakaway by Alex “Spiff” Sedrick:

After securing the five point “try” (rugby’s touchdown), the game was tied, and U.S.A. kicked the conversion – worth two points – and stunned Australia with a 14 to 12 victory with no time left on the clock. The bronze medal is the highest finish that American women’s rugby team has ever had in Olympic history.

This video and message below conveys just how big of a deal that is: