Time at university in USA helped prepare Highland rugby player Eilidh MacGilvray for step into professional game with Glasgow Warriors in 2024/25 Celtic Challenge
Highland Rugby Club’s Eilidh MacGilvray believes her time at university in the USA has prepared her for life with the Glasgow Warriors.
The 21-year-old has been included in the Warriors squad for this season’s Celtic Challenge, which pits women’s teams from Scotland, Ireland and Wales against each other in a round-robin competition.
It is a semi-professional set-up based out of Scotstoun Stadium, bringing opportunities for women to bridge the gap between the club game and the international stage.
However, MacGilvray may have been better prepared for that environment than most after spending three years at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Playing at the top level of collegiate sports, students are treated like professional athletes, and sometimes MacGilvray and her teammates sat on a bus for as many as 12 hours to get to matches.
Still living in Boat of Garten, that travel point has come in particularly useful as she travels to Glasgow for training and matches, with the team’s next outing coming at Scotstoun this Saturday against The Clovers.
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“It was really fun, and really intense,” MacGilvray said of her time in Atlanta.
“I actually think that helped me coming back into the Celtic Challenge. You would train for two hours a day, every day, for your strength and conditioning.
“You’re expected to be committed, and I was used to the travel because we would be on a bus for 12 hours to Penn State all the time, so that set me up really well for this.
“We were playing at the highest collegiate level, so it was so competitive.
“I’m used to that competitive environment, so that has set me up really well I think.”
Even after going to the other side of the world and back, MacGilvray has found some home comforts in Glasgow.
Head coach Lindsey Smith is from Inverness and has friends who play alongside MacGilvray with Highland, and the back rower’s former youth teammate Aisha Sutcliffe – now at Stirling County – is also in the squad.
Having met up with her fellow Warriors in November, the 21-year-old is already feeling her game improve, and she cannot wait to show how far both she and the squad have come in their first home game of the campaign this weekend.
“You can definitely see the difference from the level of the Premiership,” MacGilvray said of her new teammates.
“It’s also so exciting to get to play with someone like Lisa Martin, who has played for Scotland. It’s just about trying to take in as much knowledge as I can from these experienced players.
“I’m getting to see more and learn how much you can actually do within a game skills-wise and what options you have.
“At this level, the coaches will give us input and feedback, but a lot of it also comes from the other players. When you’re playing with people who have this experience and knowledge, you can coach each other and tell each other what they can do better.
“I’m just excited for our home games. To get the opportunity to show what we’ve been working on will be great, and we’ve made so many improvements from week to week.
“You can really see it coming together, which is good because we have such a diverse group of players from different clubs.
“At Edinburgh, a lot of them already knew each other and have played together, but we are only just coming together and it will be really exciting to showcase that in our five games at Scotstoun.”
There is an obvious role model for any woman in the Highlands looking to make a name for themselves in rugby, with Jade Konkel-Roberts captain of Harlequins and one of the most prominent Scottish national team players after coming from Munlochy.
MacGilvray saw first hand the impact Konkel-Roberts can have when the pro helped out with Highland’s youth team training, and she admits the 66-cap number eight has been a big inspiration.
“Something I really liked was having a role model who was a girl,” she recalled.
“When I’m home I also go and help Highland’s youth players with strength and conditioning in the gym to make sure the young girls have someone they can look up to.
“I had Jade Konkel-Roberts. As a youth player, she came to a lot of things.
“Whenever she was home she would be watching our games or coming to our training sessions. It wasn’t necessarily that she was leading the sessions, she would just join in with us.
“We were 15 and probably so bad, but she would make the time, and it happened often enough that when she turned up it wasn’t a big deal. That was really nice.
“When I was going away I wasn’t sure if it would be a bad decision for my rugby, but I could look at Jade and see she had to go to France for game time.
“I have always looked up to her – especially because she always gives back to the younger players in Inverness. That’s something I really like about her.”