Mieneke Maher, mother of U.S. rugby athlete Ilona Maher, would have been in Tokyo this week if it weren’t for the pandemic. So she organized the next best thing: friends and family, all in one room, crowded around a TV screen, decked out in their best red, white and blue outfits to see Maher play for the U.S. women’s rugby team.
Maher’s uncle still had a cutout of her face from her Burlington High School games, so they dug that out of the basement for her Olympic debut.
Maher garnered attention as a standout rugby player at Norwich University, then transferred to Quinnipiac University, where she earned a nursing degree. She has been playing with the U.S. national team since 2018.
Now she is headed to the rugby sevens quarterfinals after Team USA defeated China 28-14 Wednesday night and then beat Japan 17-7 early Thursday morning.
“I keep feeling like I’m gonna start crying because I’m so proud of her,” said Anna Cote-Wurzler, who’s been best friends with Maher since they were 3 years old. “She’s been working for this our entire lives.”
Austin Hall, the women’s rugby head coach at Norwich who first scouted Maher at a Burlington High game, also joined the cheering crowd Wednesday night at the Elks Lodge in Burlington’s New North End.
“I could tell she was going places. I mean, just the way she moved versus everyone else on the field,” Hall said, recalling the first time he saw Maher play. “She just had a spark to her.”
Mieneke Maher said she and Ilona talk most days, even though the 13-hour time difference means the day in Tokyo ends when Burlington’s begins.
Meineke said she was feeling “incredibly nervous” before Wednesday’s game but grateful so many people had rallied to show their support.
“She’s ready,” Mieneke Maher said. “She’s worked her absolute butt off. Her dedication is beyond compare.”
Mieneke also keeps up with Ilona’s Olympic journey through TikTok 一 alongside more than 500,000 followers. While lots of Olympic athletes use social media to share behind-the-scenes moments in Tokyo, Maher acquired a particularly devoted following after her jokes about flirting and other goofy moments in the Olympic village.
“She just has an incredible knack for projecting kindness and inclusiveness and just, you know, normalcy through the TikToks, which is incredible,” Mieneke Maher said. “When I watch them, even I giggle.”
Cote-Wurzler, 25, said it hasn’t been weird for her to watch the internet get starry-eyed for her best friend.
“It feels honestly like everybody should know her,” Cote-Wurzler said. “She’s such a good person that it feels like the rest of the world is getting to see what I’ve got to see for the last two-plus decades.”
