Making the call to step away from international rugby was one Beatriz Futuro Muhlbauer agonised over but it was only natural that she would elect to stay involved with the game she loves.
Futuro has been part of the women’s game since its infancy in Brazil, first picking up an oval ball as a teenager and going on to represent her country on the World Rugby Sevens Series circuit, at three Rugby World Cup Sevens and one Olympic Games.
Since hanging up her boots two years ago, Futuro has filled a number of roles at the Confederaçāo Brasileira de Rugby as she has tried to help maintain the growth of female participation in her homeland.
That has only been accelerated by her involvement with the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme, which she credits with helping her identify exactly where she wants to focus her abundant energy.
“Honestly, I think the programme made me take some decisions,” Futuro, affectionately known as ‘Baby’, explained.
“I was like, ‘Nah, I’ll go with the flow. I can see opportunities here, over there’. I was working on a lot of fronts and had a lot of open doors.
“But this programme actually helped me to focus on what is the next step and where I am going to have the most impact with all the baggage that I have. Not baggage in a hard way, it’s not heavy, but I do have this responsibility.
“So, I thought this programme was going to help me with the experiences that I was going to have… because what I understood was that it was about network.”
Action plan
That network is already providing a tangible benefit for Futuro and the work that she is doing to further grow the game in Brazil.
On being accepted onto the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme last year, Futuro sought advice from Brazil’s two previous scholars, Marjorie Enya and Natasha Olsen.
And on a trip to Paris, for the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Summit last October, her working relationship with Olsen – and other alumni – was strengthened.
During their time at the Campus Les Fontaines – Serge Kampf in Chantilly, France, Futuro and Olsen devised two action points to help supercharge the women’s game back home.
“I got together with Natasha Olsen, who was in the programme the year before me, and we did a workshop and we thought about some actions that we would do. So, we came out of there with two actions.
“One was about creating more awareness and things like that for the community. We used Mother’s Day to make mums talk about why they want their kids to play rugby, and how rugby has helped them.
“It was nice because it was another point of view. Everybody here (in Brazil), at least, thinks rugby is violent so when you have a mum talking about a sport like ours, for us over here, it has a lot of impact.
“So, that was very nice during March and the other thing that we’ve done is to ask the federation to have more 15s games.
“We only started 15s two years ago in Brazil. We didn’t have enough games, so we started in a different way. We started with the national teams because the states didn’t have enough people to play between them.
“Now the idea is to have state games as well that are cheaper, and it was one first step to go to the nationals. So, before we went direct to the nationals and now, we have regional games, which means the number of games has increased.”
Given Brazil made history in June by qualifying for Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 for the first time, it is an approach that appears to be working.
Another area of Futuro’s work that has been positively impacted by her involvement with the Capgemini Women in Rugby Leadership Programme is Nina’s Project.
A social programme that uses rugby as a tool to develop young women and girls aged between seven and 17, Nina’s Project has visited 36 clubs around Brazil.
“We try to create a structure to have a safe space for these girls, to have people that actually understand the girls’ world and have the support, like social assistance and psychologists and all these things, and also rugby of course,” Futuro said.
“We try to create a platform where we can encourage and empower the girls, not only to play rugby and be nice citizens and all but also to be physios and administrators and all the other areas that we have in a team.”
Growing the game
To help grow the initiative further, Futuro’s mentor on the programme has put her in touch with scholarship alumni Gemma Fay, who is Head of Women’s and Girls’ Strategy at Scottish Rugby and also sits on the World Rugby Council.
“She has a lot of experience in the community level,” Futuro added.
“What I want to be is a good coordinator of development projects and I’m looking forward to gaining some experience in Scotland, and maybe Spain if my money allows.”
Prior to those potential trips, Futuro spent time in Paris in July and August, as a presenter for Brazilian YouTube channel CazéTV during the Olympic Games.
The Games hold a special place in Futuro’s heart having appeared in the inaugural women’s sevens tournament at Rio 2016.
It was the opportunity to play on that stage, in her home city, that kept her in the sport. An athletic child, she practiced capoeira, swimming and running alongside rugby before a fire was lit inside her in 2009.
“I never thought that I would be an Olympian one day when I was there at 13 years old,” Futuro added.
“[But] when rugby became an Olympic sport that’s when I was like, ‘OK, that’s what I’m going to do’.
“The first South American tournament was in 2004 and I was the youngest in the team, so I’ve been there since the beginning. It was cool.”
Futuro might be a part of the game’s past, but she is also playing an integral role in its present and future as she bids to help make the women’s game in Brazil stronger.
