15th June 2022
College student claims two rugby awards and place in Exeter Chiefs Academy
Chloe Huxter, 18, Sports Coaching and Fitness Level 3 student, is on an exciting journey securing two awards in rugby and on her way to potentially becoming part of a professional team.
Over the last four years, Chloe has been part of Paignton Rugby Club and Devon Rugby Football Union. Now she’s approaching her last year with them, she was awarded Most Improved Player by Paignton Rugby Club, then got a glass trophy for being Best Fly-Half in Devon from Devon Rugby Football Union. She said: “It was not expected at all but was an amazing surprise!”
Taking her evident skill in rugby further, Chloe has now reached the Exeter Chiefs Academy where she will be on a trial for a year to see if she has what it takes to become part of the team.
She said: “The trial involves half a year of training with the team across Devon and Cornwall, strengthening and conditioning, and working on our speed and strengths based on what position we are playing in the team. I’m really looking forward to it.”
In her position as number 10, she’ll typically be seen giving the orders to all the players, getting the team scoring and overseeing the team’s strategy of play on and off the pitch.
Discussing how that kind of position plays into her everyday life, she said: “I use that leadership in everything else I do, the confidence I have from it helps with even the simple things like talking to people.”
Time management also appears to be a great skill of Chloe’s, as she manages to balance studying at college, coaching two evenings a week, playing matches, and training at the weekends.
After going back to physical learning, Chloe said that less time on-site made things harder in her GCSEs prior to studying the course she’s on now and much prefers learning face-to-face, but has been grateful for the support her tutors have offered with all her previous challenges of remote-learning being considered.
Chloe plays volleyball whilst at college and does rugby outside of college as Chloe is one of few girls at the College that play rugby. Because of that, they used to train alongside the boys’ team which already had a full team so wasn’t quite the right experience. But Chloe wants to encourage more girls to play rugby at the College and build a full team as there is the opportunity out there to go further with it if you love doing it.