Rugby

I am far too tired to think of a decent title or edit this before posting. So, without further ado, I bring you rugby. Women's rugby to be exact. Of the Mizzou variety.

Don't ask me what I'm doing. I have no clue.

It all started at the beginning of the school year. I work for the student newspaper and every year we have a new photo editor b/c they move on to other publications (aka, ones that the Journalism school forces you into by requiring you to take a certain class). For unknown reasons, the editor and I are not "chums" making it rather difficult to enjoy taking pictures of the few assignments I have received. So I started looking for other activities to fill my time. A few friends and I were going to take a hip hop class, but opted for Zumba instead. That was fun the first time. Then we never went back. Granted, school keeps me pretty busy, but I did want something to get me out of the apartment. Fallout 3 helps keep me entertained, but I come off as an anti-social just keeping myself in my room all the time.

So that led me to the student activities fair on Wednesday, two days ago. It's just a whole bunch of tables set up in one of our open areas (we call it Lowry Mall. A quick google search revales there is a building named Lowry Hall right next to Lowry Mall. Who'd've known?). All the clubs and non-live-in sororities/fraternities and other activities on campus have a table or booth. And a few food places give out free food if you wait in a line. They run out too quickly for it to be worth it though. Anyway, I was just passing through and I happened to see rugby. "Oh, Dad played rugby in college," I thought as I walked on by. Then I realized it said women's rugby. And the girls sitting behind the table weren't the "I'm going to kill you b/c I'm so tough" kind of rugby players. So I turned around. The girl sitting there was like, "Wait, you just walked by." "Yeah, and I turned around. How intense are you guys?" "Oh, not at all. Like, we're competitive, of course, but you don't have to know anything before you play." "Nothing at all?" "Nope, we'll teach you. It's easy once you kinda understand it." "Okay." So I put my name and email down, picked up a flyer for an ice-cream meeting that afternoon.

Trust me, I am just as surprised as you are.

I went to the meeting at 5pm. I left at 6pm. That left me a day to decide if I should go to their practice. I needed to go to Walmart. If I decided to go, I would pick up a mouth guard while I was there. I knew at practice they would be running a mile to start off. I didn't know anything beyond that. I didn't know what position to expect to be put on, if there were cuts, if I would get any time on the field even if there weren't cuts. Against my better judgment, I picked up a mouth guard.

Let me tell you one thing about mouth guards. Molding them is a pain in the ass. And don't believe the bullshit "it won't burn," because it does. You boil water, take it off the heat for 30 seconds, drop your guard in for 30 more seconds, take the guard out (with a spoon? I used a fork), shake excess water off (impossible w/o getting the guard stuck to other parts of it) and stick it in your mouth to mold it for a minute. About 25 seconds in you're in pain. Both times I took mine out at 30. Then you put the guard in cold running water. I dunno...it seemed to work. I wish the fit were a bit tighter, but I'm used to retainers and the like so I expected this to kind of be like putting your teeth in the gel the orthodontist uses to make molds and it would like shooooop to your teeth (that's my suction cup sound there guys, shooooop). You braces kiddos know what I mean. It's not like that. I can't describe how it is, it's just not that.

Practice is like 2 minutes away from my apartment. We started off by doing a few stretches and tossing the ball around, introducing ourselves. About a third of the people there were rookies which was pretty cool. I think everyone but me brought water. Oops. Actually, I was surprised that I even brought my running shoes to school. And a couple of workout t-shirts. I do need to go out and get a water bottle and a few sports bras though. By tomorrow. But I'll talk more about that later.

So we run the mile. I haven't run a mile since sophomore year. I didn't take any physical education junior or senior year. I went speed walking around the indoor track a few times and swimming once. I went to a Zumba class once this year. I sweat like a pig and was sore for 3 days. I ran the mile in 8:04. That's about as fast as I was 20 pounds ago (maybe more, but I don't think I've grown more than a few inches since then so I think this is about right). And like I said, I had no water and it was hot. I didn't push myself at the end b/c I simply couldn't but I am really really proud of myself. And it's not like we ran on a track, we were on gravel. Yeah go me. One of the fastest rookies and most of them were all, "Yeah, I played soccer/softball/basketball/cheerleading (wtf? now rugby? really, who am I to judge? ice skating to racing after all)/cross country/some combination of those." I kick ass. I am so proud of myself. I don't know how better to express it.

After that it was mainly passing drills until we divided into forward and backs. I just kind of sat there with a couple other rookies until one of the coaches sized us up and told us which ones to go for. Contrary to what you might think, the backs handle the ball the most. We move it up the field and pass it to each other and score. Yeah, we're cool. I expected to be a forward since I consider myself pretty tough and like, "rawr, I'm strong, I will intimidate you, rawr rawr," but I rather like being what most people would consider offense. We don't really have offensive and defensive teams like football...rugby is more like soccer in that aspect. Oh, and you can't throw the ball forward, you have to throw it backwards. You can kick forward though. Anyway, I'm getting off topic (it seems the sugar is finally kicking in). I'm a back. I want to be inside-center or outside-center. They don't call the plays but they move around the most and make sure the play is happening like it's supposed to.

I'm going to a rugby crash course clinic in Kansas City tomorrow to learn the basics of rugby. It's from 8am to 6pm. I'm looking forward to it, but I think I'm going to die about noon. We kind of scrimmaged toward the end of practice and once it got to be 7pm, my body shut off. I was playing wing so I wasn't really needed, but it was like I just forgot to be part of the team and just stood there, kind of following after the ball, but never moving closer to it. Ok, time for homework before going to sleep early. Maybe I'll play some Fallout 3 to wind down too. I'll also try to update this more, I know I've been really bad about that. I have 3 half written drafts that I should just finish and publish, but I'm so tired right now. Maybe Sunday...