Vanderbilt Programming Board opened the 2026 IMPACT Symposium with a conversation with Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher in Langford Auditorium March 16. Senior Taylor McKinnon, who runs hurdles for Vanderbilt Track and Field, moderated the conversation.
Maher is a Team USA rugby bronze medalist and two-time Olympian. She won the 2025 ESPY for Best Breakthrough Athlete and also finished second on “Dancing with the Stars” Season 33. She is also a prominent social media figure with nearly 8 million followers across Instagram and TikTok and is known for her advocacy of body confidence and authenticity.
Maher’s message
Maher opened the talk reflecting on how she started playing rugby, sharing that the sport immediately felt like a natural fit. Throughout her childhood, she was always an athlete, playing football, basketball and softball. In her senior year of high school, she decided to take up rugby instead of softball.
“I remember the first time on the field, like I automatically felt like I knew [the sport], and it just fit my body like a glove,” Maher said. “I was tackling, I was scoring tries and I just loved the feeling of it.”
She originally pursued nursing at Quinnipiac University while leading her squad to win three National Intercollegiate Rugby Association championships. Maher recounted how when she was offered the opportunity to play rugby for Team USA, her college nursing professors encouraged her to take the opportunity over continuing nursing at that moment because they believed she could return to nursing at any time, but the chance to pursue rugby at the highest level was rare and worth taking.
The conversation then turned to body confidence and self-perception, a topic Maher is passionate about. She described her evolving relationship with her body and emphasized the non-linear nature of self-love.
“Honestly, I am still learning how to love my body and what it can do for me. Even though I’ve been on covers of Sports Illustrated and am an Olympic athlete, I still have those days where I question myself,” Maher said.
Maher encouraged young women to embrace their strength and recognize their bodies for what they can do, not just what they look like.
“I always grew up [as] the bigger girl, and so I never understood why I looked the way I did,” Maher said. “I was like, ‘Why am I so big, and I’m faster than this girl?’ It honestly wasn’t until I got to college when I started to see a little more of the beauty of myself, and it wasn’t really until afterwards, with rugby, with my teammates around me, that I really saw that ‘Oh, my body, though, not the typical definition of dainty, is still very beautiful, and it can do such amazing things.’”
Maher also discussed how her confidence has been influenced by her support system, particularly her teammates and family.
“I have an amazing teammate, Naya Tapper. She runs a confidence pyramid scheme,” Maher said. “She filters confidence down into me, just the way she speaks about herself and about me. And then I filter that down to others.”
She stressed the importance of surrounding oneself with people who uplift and validate each other, especially given the nature of negativity online. She connected this to the rise of women’s sports, noting that as the games have gained more visibility, they have also faced criticism — particularly the perception that they are less entertaining than men’s sports — a notion she pushed back on by emphasizing the distinct style and strengths of women’s rugby.
“I think that women’s rugby is a much more calculative game,” Maher said. “The way we see it, we’re planning two steps ahead. The way we play, the way we kind of connect as a team, I think is really different. So sure, you can compare [the two], but it’s also a different game.”
Turning to her personal brand and media presence, Maher spoke about her social media growth and the responsibilities that come along with visibility. She became a role model because of her vulnerability.
“I saw how much people related to the vulnerability I showed online,” Maher said. “They were like, wait a second, this Olympic athlete is human. She’s okay, she’s funny, she’s sad, she’s awkward. And people really loved that.”
Maher called starting social media a “necessary evil,” sharing that it wasn’t necessarily something she wanted to pursue, but she chose to in order to live a comfortable life, as she does not make a lot of money from rugby alone. She described how she emphasizes authenticity on her platform and explained that her brand is rooted in being herself.
“I made a hashtag with my friend on my team: beast, beauty, brains,” Maher said. “Sometimes female athletes are put in a box, and I wanted to show there are so many facets to us, and that’s just been easy to build my brand around.”
The conversation also covered Maher’s experience on “Dancing with the Stars.” She said her favorite dance was her semifinals dance where she performed a Paso Doble, a style of Latin ballroom dance.
“It was really hard. I had never danced, and it was long hours, four hours a day, no days off,” Maher said. “But I’m so happy I did it. I got to show all the moments I cried on national television but also my body type — still being graceful, still being me.”
Community reactions
Maher closed the conversation affirming her commitment to rugby, hoping to re-enter the sport as a player while continuing to serve as an advocate for the women’s game. The Vanderbilt men’s and women’s club rugby teams were in attendance and got to meet and take photos with Maher after the talk.
The Vanderbilt Women’s Rugby Football Club is newly revived, having just been approved in February. Maher filmed a video for their social media page, encouraging girls to sign up and play. Club president AJ Johnson, a second-year law student, said that Maher’s platform and Team USA’s Olympic success have elevated rugby’s visibility in the United States.
“Ilona Maher’s social media footprint and the USA women’s rugby team winning bronze in Paris boosted women’s rugby into the American public consciousness in a way that has never been seen before,” Johnson said. “Suddenly, it felt like everybody was talking about rugby, and usually in the same breath, they were talking about Ilona Maher’s unique approach.”
Johnson added that Maher’s discussion of her teammates dedicating years of physical sacrifice to the sport without long-term financial security highlights the financial barriers for women in sports, while also showing the importance of youth access to rugby for developing key skills like teamwork, decision-making and resilience.
“This is why the support of college and high school women’s teams is so important because girls and women are so often left behind when it comes to the growth of contact sports in the United States,” Johnson said. “For the sport in the future, there needs to be a focus on support for younger players such as touch-rugby for girls and boys at a young age or the continued support of college and high school programs to get, and keep, more women on the pitch.”
Members of the Nashville Women’s Rugby Football Club were also in attendance. For Bailee Gray, social chair of NWRFC, Maher’s honesty about imperfection stood out most.
“One thing that Ilona emphasized was the fact that while she appreciates being a role model for athletes, she isn’t perfect,” Gray said. “People can tend to put athletes on a pedestal of perfection, and she is showing that they are humans just like us. She has hard days and times where she may doubt herself or have bad thoughts like anyone else.”
Sophomore Syrah Sanders echoed Maher’s discussion of the realities behind being a professional athlete, particularly in women’s sports.
“I thought it was interesting how Maher talked about social media as a ‘necessary evil’ for making a living as a female professional rugby player and how an income solely based on performance isn’t livable,” Sanders said. “But I do love what Ilona Maher does with her platform, promoting women’s empowerment and excellence.”
McKinnon said the experience was both meaningful and personally resonant. As a student-athlete and communication studies major, she connected with many of the themes Maher discussed, particularly around confidence and identity. She also emphasized how Maher’s authenticity stood out both on stage and in their brief interaction beforehand.
“It’s especially special to me as an athlete here at Vanderbilt, as I see myself navigating through some of the same challenges Ilona shares — balancing beauty as an athlete while also embracing a new kind of strength, both physically and mentally,” McKinnon said. “The experience was also so special to me, being able to showcase my passion for storytelling. I would have never thought that I could lead or moderate such an impactful conversation with such an awe-inspiring person.”
