As fall registration opens and a new group of students prepares to walk onto a MICR field for the first time, the coaches who will meet them there are people like Shaniah, a ten year MICR veteran who started as a player at 14, grew into a mentee, a mentor, and eventually a coach, and has spent every year since finding new ways to give back to the community that shaped her.
In the spring of 2015, a group of girls at Freedom Prep Academy decided they were done waiting. The boys had a rugby team, and that was not going to be the end of the story. Shaniah was one of those girls, and the team they pushed for that spring became the beginning of something she is still part of today.
She played through high school, stayed connected through MICR's alumni program as a mentee working alongside Julian, grew into a mentor role, and eventually started coaching. She has coached across multiple MICR teams over the years, working with middle and high school players, girls and boys, and she brings the same investment to every one of them. Every step has been a different way of giving back to the same community that gave her something to hold onto.
Coaching is not a small commitment. Shaniah spends Sundays planning practice, shows up twice a week, and transports her students to the field herself. On game days, the commitment grows. She does it because she genuinely cares about the kids she works with, and because she remembers what it felt like to have someone in her corner.
What she loves most is watching students find their footing. She thinks about a younger player she coached this past season who came in uncertain and on the smaller side, surrounded by bigger, more experienced teammates, and not quite sure rugby was for them. By the end of the season, that same player was confident, fully in it, tackling without hesitation. "I just love that," she says. That kind of change is what keeps her coming back.
Coaching has also changed how she sees young people. She is more patient now, more attuned to what kids are carrying when they walk onto the field. "Just because they are a child doesn't mean they can't go through something," she says, and that understanding shapes how she shows up for her players every single week.
One of the things she values most about MICR is that there is genuinely room for everyone. No cuts, no favorites, no varsity and JV divide in middle school, just players at every level learning the sport together and being encouraged to keep going. "We always try to encourage everybody to play," she says. "Everybody is going to get some sort of playing time, some sort of learning time." She sends messages to her team group chat signed off with hashtags, Sisterhood or Brotherhood, because she wants her players to know that what they have built together is real.
When asked what MICR means to her, she is straightforward about it. "MICR is a program that has shaped me into the person I am today," she says. She has played volleyball, basketball, and cheer, and none of it stuck the way rugby did. "I feel like they care. I feel like they believed in me. And I want to show kids that I believe in them too."
She was 14 when she first walked onto a rugby field, one of a handful of girls who decided they deserved a team. She is 24 now, still showing up, still believing in the next kid who is not sure they belong yet.