While most Harvard students are frantically trying to write papers and finish problem sets before heading off for winter break, senior Haley Steele is fulfilling her athletic dreams by playing on the USA Women's Rugby under-23 National team this December.

The team is the developmental team for the National Team, the Eagles, and will tour England for the next two weeks facing England's toughest competition. Steele, along with Harvard graduates Zelime Ward '98 and Carolyn Magill '97, are three of the 25 players selected for this traveling team.

During the tour in England the team will face the University of Cambridge, the Army 15, England Students--the equivalent of an All-American team--and England's national developmental team. Selection to this team is highly competitive, and it is a huge accomplishment.

"It's an honor to be playing for the U.S., and it's also an honor to play with the players on the team, who are the best collegiate players around," Steele said. "Rugby's going to be an Olympic sport in 2004, and the Eagles are going to play there, so [selection to this team] opens up a lot of doors."

This is also an accomplishment for the entire Radcliffe rugby program.

"Having three Radcliffe rugby players means a lot in terms of one team's dedication to rugby in and beyond college," senior Erica Brooks said.

In preparation for the tour, the team had a week of training and games in Tampa on Dec. 2-6, where they competed against select USA club teams from all regions of the country in the Inter-Territorial Tournament. They did a rigorous amount of training in Tampa, practicing as many as six hours per day. The under-23 team started in the summer of 1997 and has improved a lot since then.

"The thing that always strikes me about the under-23 team is that, in this country, there's never been a group of girls our age, that has played rugby as well as we do," Steele said. "There's just a sense that we can put the bar as high as it can go."

Steele is looking forward to the high level of competition and to playing with her former teammates, Ward and Magill.

"I'm really excited to play with them again, and it's nice to be in an environment where rugby is the top priority," Steele said. "It's so incredible when you get there and everybody is so phenomenal. You just look around and think, 'Oh my God, this is a privilege to play with these people."'

While this is not Steele's first international competition, it will be here first time playing in England, which has a rich rugby tradition.

"It's really exciting to go to a country where rugby matters to people," Steele said. "It's a country where rugby is taken really seriously. It's nice to have that respect accorded to it, which it doesn't get over here."

Even though the U.S. is relatively new to rugby as compared to England, Steele believes that the U.S. team has an edge on its British counterparts in terms of athleticism.

Steele also feels that it is more socially acceptable for women to play rugby in the United States.

Steele began playing on the Radcliffe Rugby team her freshman year very coincidentally. Knowing that she wanted to play a sport in college, she signed up for many different sports at the Freshman Activities Fair. All the teams called back, but all of the phone numbers blew off her desk and "rugby was the only phone number that I remembered."