Junior Olivia Anglade is anxious.

Midterms are almost here, her computer is on the fritz and the cluster is a real pain to use.

And oh yeah, at noon today, she needs to help the Stanford women’s rugby team beat the ghost of East Coast superiority and take one more step toward a national championship in the university’s oldest sport.

It’s hard to believe that less than three years ago, she was only curious . . .

Back then, Anglade was an athlete without a team. Terms like “scrum,” “maul” and “prop” were part of a language she didn’t speak.

It was then that fortune used her old high school passion to open up an unexpected door.

“I was playing in the advanced soccer class, and the women’s rugby team practiced on the same field after us in the afternoons,” Anglade remembered. “At the beginning of the year, when the freshmen come in, there’s heavy recruiting [for club sports] on all sides.”

Beating a hasty escape from Flicks on a Sunday night, she found herself assaulted with an informational flyer, and so unwittingly set out on the very adventure for which she had been searching.

“I went out [to practice], and I was really nervous,” Anglade said. “I didn’t want to go in; I just wanted to watch.”

Once she saw action, however, it was her soon-to-be teammates who were stopping to watch - and marvel.

“Every year, there are one or two rookies who just get it,” said senior flanker Katie Hill, co-president and co-captain of the team. “Olivia was one of those few who seemed like she’d been playing rugby all her life. It just comes naturally to her.”

After hesitating to join in the contact of practice during those early days, Anglade, a fullback, now seems right at home as she took three opposing defenders for a ride into the try zone in Stanford’s Elite Eight matchup with Virginia on April 18.

Then again, perhaps it should come as no surprise that Anglade has taken to her new home on the rugby pitch with such aplomb. Geographical change has been her only constant as she has moved around the world during her father’s 20-year career in the U.S. Navy. A graduate of a high school in Seoul, South Korea, for military dependents, she still travels halfway around the world to spend time with her family in Korea during holiday breaks.

To a plate already filled with a new sport and a major in civil engineering, Anglade added 15 hours per week in Stanford’s Army ROTC program and a four-year active-duty commitment after graduation.

“The military’s always been a part of my life,” Anglade said. “It’s a lot of things to juggle, but we manage, and all Stanford students do it.”

Uh, yeah, sort of.

While readers quickly reconsider their own “busy” school weeks, Anglade, along with the rest of her team, prepares to play in her first Final Four.

It will be the team’s fiercest competition and biggest stage of the season, but excuse their captain if she isn’t overwhelmed by the setting.

After just two years in the sport, Anglade accepted an invitation to join the Under 23 U.S. National Rugby Team for its trip to New Zealand to compete against its Kiwi counterparts in a country that worships the game.

Not that she’d ever advertise the fact. Or reveal it without some heavy-duty detective work, for that matter.

“She’s just amazing, because she doesn’t talk about it a lot,” junior flanker Dena Acosta said. “I was out when all this was happening, because I was getting surgery. I came back and I went to her room and saw all these pictures and asked her where she’d gone. She said, Oh, yeah, I went there with the National Team,’”

Though she might treat acclaim as something to be endured rather than sought, it seeks her out all the same as she traces out a learning curve that approaches the vertical and introduces her teammates to a standard of excellence that transcends their regular season schedule.

“It really puts you in a different light when you’re able to see the international game and go to a culture where rugby is number one,” coach Rob Holder said. “We in American rugby tend to think of ourselves as a second-rate club sport. When you travel, you see what’s out there and it makes you bring back a certain level of dedication. When [rookies] see someone like Olivia who’s really made a commitment, then it kind of brings the rest of the team up.”

As Stanford tries to recruit a fresh set of faces for the fall during Admit Weekend, the advertising campaign could hardly have a better face than the young woman whose teammates spontaneously broke into a cheer of “Be Olivia” after a particularly inspiring performance.

“It makes us really proud to say that she’s on our team,” Acosta said. “It also gives us a little bit of credibility. We tell people to come out to our games and say we have these national players and they say ‘Whoa, you’re actually for real, you’re not just some second-rate club sport.’ It’s good, because I think our whole team deserves to have that.”

While Stanford roles through its Pacific Coast League tilts on a yearly basis, it’s the battle of perceptions that represents the team’s biggest hurdle. In a crusade to take themselves more seriously and have others do the same, Anglade’s teammates could ask for no better ally.

Fundraising?

She’s on it.

Special-fees petitions?

Olivia did two.

Leading practice while the team was trying to replace its old coach?

Do you even need to ask?

“In a club sport, students take on a lot of responsibilities,” senior Percy Link said. “Having someone who is willing to put in the time and the work for it has kept our team afloat for the last couple of years.”

As fans crowd into Steuber Rugby Stadium for today’s national semifinal, Anglade and Stanford will look to move that much closer to the ultimate goal.

“To upset UVA to get here is just awesome,” Anglade said. “Stanford having the facilities, the beautiful stadium, just puts the word out that West Coast rugby is here and somebody should pay attention.”

Don’t worry, Olivia. Now they are.