Lately, Christine Bader ’93 has been reflecting on how to honor the role Amherst played in her life. “I’m thinking a lot about legacy,” she says. “Seeing my parents, step-parents and parents-in-law get older has motivated me to consider what has made me the person I am and which of those experiences I want to honor. Amherst is definitely one of them.”

Bader came to the College from New York City, and it struck her as idyllic—not only the campus but also the sense of curiosity and possibility it evoked. “Amherst just seemed like a wonderful, welcoming environment where I could explore a lot of things,” she says, “and that’s exactly what I ended up doing.” 

When Bader attended the rugby keg in the spring of her first year at Amherst, she thought, I have found my people. Now, over 30 years later, she considers playing rugby at the College formative to her understanding of community. “Rugby is a full-contact sport, and I learned how strong we could be—individually and collectively,” she says. “I’ve never forgotten what it taught me about leadership, resilience and teamwork.”

She arrived as a tennis player and played her first fall at Amherst. Peter Robson, the women’s tennis coach, convinced all the new tennis recruits to play squash during the winter. Bader then decided to try a club sport for the spring, something that would be student-run and a lighter commitment than a varsity sport. Once she discovered rugby, there was no turning back. Bader quit tennis to play rugby in the fall and spring.

“Rugby became a huge part of my Amherst experience,” she recalls—and she was not alone in her enthusiasm for the sport. “When I joined the team in the spring of 1990, there were about 20 players. By the time I was president of the club in my senior year, 80 women played.” Bader remembers this time a golden age of rugby at the College, when approximately 10 percent of the student body was involved in the game. “Rugby has a very low barrier to entry,” she notes. “You don’t need a lot of equipment or a certain body type. You don’t need to have been playing since you were three; half of the Team USA women who won Olympic bronze last summer didn’t start playing until after college. It’s a famously inclusive sport.”

Rugby continues to be a part of Bader’s life in ways that she never could have foreseen. “In 2019, I moved to a small town in Oregon,” she says. “A couple of years in, I learned there was a girls rugby club at the local high school, and I thought, Oh to have learned some of those skills and life lessons in high school!” So Bader volunteered to serve as assistant coach for two spring seasons. Then the head coach stepped down. “I found myself the accidental head coach of a girls rugby club,” Bader laughs.

It has been a happy excuse to reconnect with Amherst friends. Evan Wollen ’94, director of women’s rugby at the Claremont Colleges, has become a coaching mentor. Bader is still in touch with Bob Hopley, the longtime Amherst men’s and women’s rugby coach, and Jim Feldman ’93, who led the men’s club when Bader led the women. Erika Myers ’93, one of Bader’s Amherst rugby teammates who lives in Bend, Oregon, has come to every game that she has brought her team to in the area. “In addition to the strength of teamwork,” Bader says, “I’ve been able to show my players that rugby friendships really do last a lifetime.”

Bader’s pride in Amherst has also lasted. “I’m proud of Amherst’s steadfast commitment to making sure that an Amherst education is accessible to people who don’t already have elite pathways open to them,” she says. “I’m floored by the myriad ways that Amherst alumni are making their mark on the world. And I continue to think of Amherst as a beacon of integrity, and intellectual and moral leadership.”

Bader has provided for Amherst through a bequest in her estate plans to honor the ways the College shaped her and to see that an Amherst education endures for future generations. Even as she juggles the demands of being a mother, a daughter, a coach, a school board member, and an adjunct faculty member teaching corporate responsibility at Linfield University, she keeps her eye on what matters: “I try not to let life get in the way of staying connected with the people and places that have had a meaningful impact on me. Even though it’s a modest bequest compared to some, it’s my way of declaring that Amherst was a formative experience.”