Kayla Canett keeps her bronze medal in a box under her bed. She’s taken it out only a few times since coming back from France—when she threw out the first pitch at a San Diego Padres game, and to show family and friends. Otherwise, she says, “I’m just keeping it safe.”

That protectiveness is understandable given how unlikely a medal seemed until the final seconds of the third-place rugby 7s match in Paris. Canett, a standout on the 2017 Penn State team that won a national championship, was a starter for the Americans on that 90-degree day in July, and she came just inches away from scoring the game’s first try. She was on the sidelines in the closing seconds when teammate Alex Sedrick bowled over one Australian defender, slipped through the grasp of another, and sprinted the length of the field to give the U.S. a shocking 14-12 win and the first medal in U.S. women’s rugby history.

It was the second Olympic appearance for Canett, a flyhalf who made her national team debut in 2016. After the dramatic win in Paris, she says, “I just kept crying on the field, like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that just happened. We’ve medaled in other tournaments, but this is an Olympic medal. It was surreal.”