EIU Olympians |Â
Team USA Women's Rugby |Â
2024 Paris Olympics
Former Eastern Illinois women's rugby player and Panthers Athletic Hall of Fame inductee Lauren Doyle will be heading to compete in her third Olympic Games this summer in Paris. She becomes the first former EIU athlete to compete in three Olympic Games.
For over a decade, Doyle has been representing her country on the national stage as part of the U.S. Women's Rugby Sevens Team.
Doyle joined Team USA halfway through her senior year in 2012 and after a residency at the Olympic Training Center made her international Women's Sevens tournament debut at the 2012 Dubai Sevens.
She established herself as a player to watch, leading all players in try-scoring at the 2015 Olympics qualifiers. She was also a major player on the 2015 silver-medal winning US Women's National Rugby Sevens team at the 2015 PanAm Games.
A year later, Doyle made her Olympics debut in Rio de Janeiro. She scored a try in a group stage victory over Colombia and the U.S. eventually made it to the quarter-finals before falling to eventual silver-medalist New Zealand.
Doyle returned to the Games in Tokyo where the US finished with a perfect 3-0-0 record in the group stage before being eliminated in the quarterfinals, dropping a match to Great Britain.
The Paris Olympic Games will mark the third time Doyle has competed at the Summer Olympics and she and Team USA are hoping to reach the medal podium for the first time.
Additionally, Doyle's leadership and experience have been recognized in an official capacity when Team USA Coach Emilie Bydwell named her a co-captain of the squad along with teammate Naya Tapper.
