"Why did you decide to play a club sport in college if it doesn’t get you anywhere? Why spend so much of your time on something that is completely irrelevant to your degree? Why this sport in particular? Are you trying to seem unladylike? It’s kind of like football isn’t it?"
My family is usually very understanding, but as the common misunderstood college trope goes, they don’t always get me. I’ve been a student athlete for almost my entire life—having shunned ballet after a solid year of spinning in circles and still managing to nearly tackle my surrounding partners with my gracelessness. Sports have been a stolid facet of my life, from softball to basketball to soccer to my brief attempts at lacrosse, and that wasn’t something that I wanted to end coming into college. My roommate and I freshman year began our friendship by awkwardly staring at each other until one of us said hello. We had both been athletes. We both wanted to continue to be athletes. Neither of us really seemed interested in pursuing any sports we had played previously.
Miami University holds a club sports fair at the beginning of every semester. I was still secretly holding out for softball or maybe even basketball, something familiar. I was at a new school hundreds of miles from home. Everything was unfamiliar. I remember the two girls that came up to me and my then-roommate. They were peppy, they looked athletic, and I didn’t pay attention to a single word they said until “rugby." We joined the team later that week, and one of those two girls would later go on to become my Big. Out of impulse or just a desire to get to know each other better, neither of us really knew what we were getting ourselves into.
Other than the one gym class I took that we had tried playing the sport, I had no experience whatsoever with rugby. But I didn’t need it. No one that joined, freshman or otherwise, had any idea how to play. We were all in the same boat. The first game I played, I thought I was going to be annihilated. I am not a large and intimidating person. How was I supposed to tackle someone?! What was going to happen when (not if) I got tackled? How do you even score points in this game? I was playing one of the easier positions to play, a wing, and I hardly had anything to do that game. I was still floored.
One of our team mascots, Ophelia, at our home tournament.
I am now two years into this “weird” college sport, as my dad insists upon calling it. I have not died, as my grandparents keep asking every time I come home during break. No, rugby still has nothing to do with my writing and potential design degree. No, I still don’t care. Trying to explain this lovingly complex sport to them was almost impossible, and it’s still almost impossible.
As for why rugby? That I still can’t answer. It’s not because I don’t know what this sport means to me. It’s like being in a sorority, only we have to tackle each other every Tuesday and Thursday. My roommate from freshman year who joined the team with me is now one of the best friends I have ever had. We eat lunch together, study together, and hang out together. We’re a family in every way other than actually being related to one another. Most importantly, this sport makes me feel empowered. If I can tackle a girl out on the pitch and come out still able to walk, why can’t I sit and talk to someone for a job interview, or sit through two hours of an Italian final that I feel hopelessly unprepared for no matter how long I study.
My teammates and I in rugby have bonded in a way that I have never been able to with other sports teams. Some of it is probably related to the close proximity we play with each other, the amount that we truly need to rely on each of our teammates in a game. We come out of games sometimes with scrapes and bruises, other times we come out of games covered in mud from a game that the heavens had opened up just in time for.
We have a team motto that we say (or rather scream) before every game. It goes: "I am an individual, but when I put on this jersey, I am a member of this team. We are fast. We are strong. We are a machine. We are Miami Women’s Rugby."
For Christmas this past year, my mom made me a huge poster with all of the pictures I have taken with my teammates and friends and these words right alongside them.
The fact remains: I may love writing and design and the more traditionally “girly” hobbies. I may love a quote-unquote weird sport that isn’t hugely common, especially in women’s sports, though since the addition of rugby to the Olympics, women’s rugby recognition has been improving. My family might not entirely get why I love going out and tackling other people for the sake of winning games alongside my best friends. But that doesn’t take rugby outside of my wheelhouse. In fact, I feel like it makes me even more of a badass college woman. That makes me, if anything, more prepared for anything I’ll encounter after my days playing for this team. These girls have changed my life, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
