  | Most players on the women’s rugby team have never even seen a rugby match the first time they show up for practice. | |||||||
Organized ChaosBy Shane Donaldson Being a part of the URI women’s rugby team means taking on organized chaos. Game action involves 30 women ramming into each other at full speed with no pads non-stop for at least an hour. A day after the game your body feels like it was hit by a Mack truck. And that’s the easy part. Unlike most other athletic programs at either the varsity or club level, almost none of the players have previous experience with the sport before getting to college. That means each season begins with the entire team having to teach new recruits the most basic rules of the game. Most players have never even seen a rugby match the first time they show up for practice. Aside from teaching inexperienced players, the upper-classmen on the team are also responsible for conduct-ing practices, organizing travel for road games, staying on top of team finances, organizing the spring season schedule, and sending out the team’s alumnae newsletter. The six-game competitive schedule (in the fall for URI and the rest of the schools on the Division II level) is set up by the New England Rugby Football Union. All the rest is done by the team without the benefit of a coaching staff, and unlike the varsity teams that begin practices before the school year begins, the process for rugby starts after the fall semester kicks off. That’s a small window of time to pull it all together. In the game of rugby, the main rule new players learn is that the ball cannot be passed forward. Much like the sport itself, the URI program often has to go backwards in order to advance. “We are always trying to move the team forward, but it’s hard because at the start of every year everyone has to take a step backwards,” said senior Rachel Ferland, the club vice president. “The key is that the older girls always remember what it was like when they were rookies. Back then, we all had feelings of, ‘What am I doing? What is going on?’ New players always say they don’t know what they are doing, and we have to tell them, ‘That’s okay, nobody knows.’ “A lot of times we’ll do things with the newer players on the side while the team works on certain drills, just so they can visualize what is going on. If they have questions, they can ask at any time during drills.” This fall, for the first time in several years, the team has a couple of volunteer coaches who have been helping teach the players new drills. In a perfect world, the team would be able to create a full-time position for the “coaches,” headed this year by Junior Tuiqere and Scott Spitler. “This year we have guys who have rugby experience who have been teaching drills and helping at practice,” Ferland said. “We are trying to raise the funds to implement them as real coaches so we can have somebody there three days a week. Without the coaches, it’s really hard to tell your peers, ‘Okay, now we are doing wind sprints.’ It’s easier when there is an actual coach.” Though the volunteers make life easier, Ferland said this is the first time in her career the team has had such a luxury. Most years the team is on its own, working through two-hour practices five days a week with games on Saturdays and fundraising efforts each Sunday. They get a budget from the school for equipment and travel expenses. Anything beyond that, such as coaches’ salaries, buying uniforms, or organizing social events like team banquets, is up to the athletes to cover. “This year we are planning a trip for the first weekend in November to Florida,” Ferland said. “Marinda Reynolds, one of the girls who graduated from the team last year, is now a grad student playing at the University of Florida, and we are going there to play in a tournament. We are selling candy, doing car washes, and anything else to make money. “One other way we raise funds is through team dues, but we try to keep dues as low as possible so anybody can play. Usually dues are in the $50 range, and we try to do the rest through fundraising. Almost all of the dues will go towards paying the coaches this year.” Despite the chaos involved, Ferland and her teammates could not imagine college without the foundation provided by rugby. “Anybody who has ever played rugby in their life can only say one word about it: addictive,” Ferland said. “Once you start playing, you don’t want to stop. It’s very athletic, and very much an adrenaline rush. I love the game. I play in tournaments all summer long. Seven or eight of us get together for six tournaments a year.” Several players plan to continue playing after they leave school. Ferland said the team has formed an alliance with a men’s team in Providence that is looking to form a women’s team. The tournaments the URI players participated in over the summer were through the Providence team. For now, Ferland is enjoying her final season in Kingston. “For a lot of us, as we get older, it has been a wakeup call,” Ferland said. “It was a lot of fun as a freshman and sophomore because you could just show up and play. Now we are starting to realize that the older you get and the higher up you are with the team, you see how much work really goes into it. You definitely get a deeper appreciation for what the girls before you did. “It’s a complete team effort. No one person alone makes things happen. We have somebody in charge of recruiting, fundraising, the traveling, the coaching and someone for picking who plays on Saturday. It’s the only way it could work.” |
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