Not a skirt-wearing sport
If rugby was easy, it would be called your mom.
Pretty offensive?
Sure, maybe a little bit, but not if you’re a women’s rugby player.
That clever “your mom” joke graces the back of a t-shirt the team got at a tournament that was held in San Diego over Spring Break. Many of the tournaments the team plays in have slightly offensive slogans similar to that one, so a certain level of irreverence isn’t a new thing for the team.
“The trainer was telling us that our team is more crude than half the stuff she hears in the hockey locker room,” flanker Ashley Wright said.
Maybe that doesn’t sound very lady-like, but no one ever claimed that rugby was a typical women’s sport.
“It’s not a skirt-wearing sport,” Angie Winder, the team’s fly half, said.
And it isn’t just the unabashed political incorrectness, or the “your momma” jokes that separate rugby from typical female sporting fodder.
Rugby is a very physical game, and the evidence of this is written all over the team members’ bodies.
Many girls proudly sport multi-colored – purple, blue, green and yellow – bruises on their thighs, backs and arms. Concussions and knee injuries are other popular injuries the girls flaunt as badges of toughness.
“Cassie once looked like she was attacked by a bear,” Wright said about her teammate, Cassie Gordon.
Gordon, the team’s scrum half, remembered having one girl rake her cleats across her back, leaving lines of cleat marks that looked like dried blood.
Winder said she got hit in the face recently, causing her to wear a black eye that has started fading to yellow.
The girls aren’t shy about sharing their injuries, but that’s part of the pride they feel about the sport they play.
“It’s kind of a pride thing, being able to say, ‘Yeah, I play rugby,'” Wright said. “It’s a little bit dangerous. You get a high from going in there and getting ready to tackle somebody.”
Although they understand this pride, several team members said they often get funny looks when they tell people they play rugby.
“I think all our parents were like, ‘Why are you playing that?’ My parents have been hounding me for two years and after the third year they’re just like, ‘Whatever,'” Gordon said.
Another girl’s parents said it wasn’t a very “lady-like” thing to do.
It’s true, rugby doesn’t seem like something a lady would do, but the girls all said people need to disregard their gender norms when thinking about women’s rugby.
“A lot of people have problems seeing chicks take each other out, but I think it’s kind of a hot thing,” Sara Sammann, the team’s hooker, said.
The hooker is the position that tries to hook the ball out of the scrum, but the girls still joke with Sammann about the other connotation of being the team’s hooker – jokes she takes part in and seems to enjoy.
The jokes, in combination with the physical play on the field, are a release for these girls.
“Girls who are already tomboyish and aggressive and like to roughhouse, it’s allowed, it’s just fine. So it’s just another outlet for that,” Wright said.
Assistant Coach Erin Hodgson said girls should play rugby “if you’re too aggressive for other sports like basketball, and you think soccer and lacrosse are lame because you can’t hit anybody.”
In fact, a lot of the girls on the rugby team played soccer or other sports in high school but didn’t have a chance to play in college. Now, some say it would be very hard for them to go back to just playing soccer.
“If someone were to put me on a soccer field right now, I think I’d tackle someone just out of habit,” Gordon said.
Winder agrees. She said she found herself trying to take out girls during intramural basketball games.
But the release of built-up aggression doesn’t usually carry on after the match is over.
“On the field you’re wanting to kill each other and afterwards, you’re such good friends,” Wright said about opponents.
After the match is over, the girls from both sides usually take part in lady-like activities like drinking beer and singing crude, explicit-laced songs.
Teams, especially those that are losing, have been known to start chanting “10 minutes to beer,” Sammann said.
It’s all a part of the post-match social setting of a rugby tournament.
Since all the teams know the same songs, they all get together and sing while they eat pizza and drink beer, Wright said.
And although drinking isn’t as big of a part of USU’s team, it is a huge thing outside of Utah, Hodgson said.
Gordon said all the tournaments have a beer garden that players 21 and over can frequent after the match.
Other tournaments have special drinking events.
In San Diego, the team competed in the tournament’s beer olympics. And, according to team members, USU would have won these olympics if it wasn’t for a mishap at the bat spin. Apparently, a USU beer olympics competitor crashed into a table and knocked over a bunch of cups full of beer.
But it’s all a part of the social atmosphere that is at the core of rugby – one that isn’t all about drinking.
Many of the girls tell stories about getting dressed up and going out when they travel to tournaments. Several of the girls live together. Others hang out.
After matches at home, they always have a social where all the members of the team go to the Factory Pizzeria for pizza and beer, for those who drink, Gordon said.
Winder jokingly pins their camaraderie on the fact that they’ve all seen each other naked.
No matter what it is, the girls all seem to enjoy each other’s company and the release they get from being able to pitch and catch the ball, tackle and kick butt on the field.
-dabake@cc.usu.edu