At the beginning of 2023, when Zhenya Allain discovered she had been accepted onto the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme, her pride was tinged with sadness.
“I went through all the emotions,” Allain told World Rugby. “I was excited and then I asked if they were pulling my leg. ‘Is this a joke?’
“Then it hit me that I wouldn’t be able to tell my dad, as he had died the month before I got the scholarship.”
Allain’s father had not always been supportive of his daughter’s love affair with rugby, believing that the game took up too much of her time.
But he was one of two people, along with former St. Lucia Rugby Union president, Roger Butcher, who pushed her to apply for the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme.
“I’m sure you would hear the same from any rugby player. He would say, ‘Rugby again? You’re going to rugby again? You need to put yourself before rugby’,” Allain, pictured above second left, recalled.
“Then when I had to apply for the scholarship, I asked him if I should bother applying. He said, ‘Yes, you’re always with rugby and they can see that’.
“He encouraged me to apply for the scholarship and when I asked, ‘Do you think I’ll get it?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you’ll get it!’”
She added: “Maybe if there is a heaven, he can see I’ve gotten the scholarship.”
He would certainly be proud of what his daughter has been able to achieve should he be watching down on her.
Allain, who describes the game as her drug – “if there’s something I’m addicted to, it’s rugby” – has used the programme to enrol on a Master’s degree in Sports and Exercise Medicine and plans to specialise in concussion management.
A physiotherapist, she has worked with the St. Lucia women’s and men’s national sevens teams since 2005 and is a member of the Rugby Americas North (RAN) Player Welfare Working Group.
Through her participation in the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme, Allain is keen to help increase the amount of research that is available on female players.
“What I’ve found out so far is that there is little research out there,” Allain said. “We need to close that gap.”
Another area in which the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme has proved beneficial to Allain is in mapping out her future path.
“My mentor from Capgemini, Connie Bonello, really helped me figure out what path I needed to take in terms of leadership development,” she said.
“She actually guided me. St. Lucia Rugby was pushing me more towards management and [becoming] president of the union. They wanted me to go down that route, but I wanted to go down a different route.
“Yes, I am a woman in leadership, but I think it’s more important to mentor other women.”
Allain added: “I think I’ve done that to some degree. Females are more able to speak up and we have females in charge of fundraising, females are in charge in getting youth involved.
“For example, the Get Into Rugby programme, it’s more females spearheading those in our country now.”
On why she wants to see more female leaders prosper in St. Lucia, Allain said: “I’m a woman, I want to see females succeed. I want to see females get further in life.
“[In] St. Lucia… your boss is more likely to be female. I want to raise that bar even more.”
Allain says that working as the St. Lucia national team’s physio has been a “badge of honour” that has opened doors for her in her professional life.
“People would recommend me by saying, ‘She's the physio for the national rugby team, so she must be good!’,” she said.
The connections she had made through the rugby family also came in handy when she opened her own private practice.
“You need to get the tiling done. You need to get the painting done. There’s somebody in rugby who does that,” Allain explained.
“The electrics, you want stuff wired. We have an electrician in rugby. You know, everybody pitched in.
“My secretary is actually a rugby player!”
Allain also believes that her work in rugby was crucial to her landing the role as team physiotherapist with the St. Lucia Olympic Committee, travelling to Paris earlier this year as Julien Alfred made history.
Clearly her passion for rugby burns as bright now as it did the day she was introduced to the game by an ex-boyfriend when she was 16.
It was not until after graduating university, and having started working with the national team, that Allain plucked up the courage to play.
But as she heads into the next chapter of her story with the game, she has one bold ambition she wants to fulfil: to help her country qualify for the Olympic Games.
It will not be a straightforward goal to achieve. St. Lucia will not compete in Rugby Americas North competition this year as the union concentrates on building back up from the grassroots.
But Allain is confident the St. Lucia women’s team has “some really good potential” and can qualify for the Games by 2032.
“We need to start from the bottom and grow a new set of females,” Allain said.
“It may seem like a step back for some, but we need to start developing our youth once again.
“Maybe not in 2028, but hopefully 2032... see you in Brisbane!”
