Adversity a strength for Canadian rugby sevens player Olivia Apps

Olivia Apps knows how adversity can shape a person.

Now she's learning how it can shape a group as she leads Canada's women's rugby seven's team through a so-called "group of death" at the Paris Olympics.

As captain of the squad, Apps has become a face of Canadian rugby in recent years — and her image, with her broad smile and bald head, is a striking one.

The 25-year-old from Lindsay, Ont., has alopecia. She began losing her hair when she was seven years old.

While the disease has been a major challenge, Apps said it's also shaped who she is as a person.

It took doctors nearly a year to diagnose Apps with alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss.

Awareness of the condition is still lacking, she said, and she routinely gets questions about whether she is going through chemotherapy or if she shaves her head.

"I think — women especially, but men as well — but a lot of people aren't comfortably bald," Apps said. "So they don't see a lot of people without hair, they don't see a lot of women without hair. So I don't think that enables a lot of awareness because there's not a lot of exposure to it."

As a kid, she tried wearing a wig but found it brought a lot of insecurity.

"At home, around my friends, around my sisters, I felt comfortable with having no hair and not thinking twice about it. But then going to school, feeling like I had to cover something or hide something, didn't make me feel good," she explained.

"Even though I was only seven years old, I knew there was something so powerful in just being able to say `Hey, this is who I am and I don't actually care what anyone thinks."'

Apps started dreaming of the Olympics when she was in high school and Canada's women's rugby sevens team won bronze at the 2016