Eric Olsen is in his thirdyear as the head coach of the Framingham State University men's rugby club team. In his first season he coached the team to a 4 – 2 mark in the New England Rugby Football Union’s (NERFU) Minuteman Conference.

Olsen has been involved in rugby since 1974, when he moved to London, England. Since then he has been involved with rugby as both a player and a coach. As a U-17 schoolboy, Olsen was selected to the London Medallion Team in 1979. As a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) he was selected to both the Virginia collegiate select-side as well as the US Eastern Collegiate Select-Side.

Olsen served in the U.S. Army from 1984-1994 and during that time he served in Germany, Panama, in the Middle East. He also played for the US Army rugby team, including the 1986 inter-service championship team and the US Military Combined Services Rugby Team.

After leaving the Army, Olsen coached a number of collegiate and men’s rugby clubs, including Boston College, the Boston Irish Wolfhounds, and Harvard. In 2003 he led Harvard to the national championships where they were defeated by United States Air Force Academy, 45-37.

Olsen has been one of the leading promoters of youth rugby in Massachusetts. In 1997 he founded the Middlesex Youth Rugby Club which has flourished and won four NERFU championships in nine years. Olsen was also a founding member of the Massachusetts Youth Rugby Organization (MYRO) which was established in 2010. He continues to be an advocate and champion of U-19 rugby in Massachusetts.

Olsen is a former fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has a Master’s degree in International Relations and a Master’s of Secondary Education (History). He is a member of the Virginia Military Institute class of 1985, and a member of the United States Special Forces Association.

Olsen has been a high school history teacher since 1997. He resides in Framingham and has three sons; Nils a member of the West Point class of 2014; Tristan a member of the Framingham HS class of 2014; and Lars a member the Framingham schools class of 2019.