Saturday's a Rugby Day!

Yesterday marked a number of firsts for my rugby career:
1. The first time I started a game playing lock.
2. The first time a scrum collapsed directly onto my brain.
3. The first time my mother, my sister, or my Jake watched any rugby game, let alone MY rugby game.
4. The first time Molly, who recruited me to rugby (and stuff) saw me play.
5. The first time I haven't had to fix my hair at every stoppage of play.

Mom and Molly.

Sister Kelly.

All through college I played prop, and our team's strategy was "Forwards Ruck."  Because the coaches seemed convinced that our forward brains could handle little more than this level of processing, there was much about the game that I didn't understand when I joined the Maryland Stingers last fall.  Apparently, forwards don't just ruck -- they maul, pass, punch, post, and score.  And they do these things on purpose!

What I love about playing for the Stingers is that I've learned more in my 3 cumulative months of practice and matches than I did in college.  I think a large part of this is my brief stint "coaching" a middle school team in LA a few years ago, but another significant reason is that the Stingers are great teachers.

Fun, despite the cold and the score...

Coach Pam makes certain that each of us understands the techniques, the reasons for the techniques, and how they fit into the bigger rugby picture.  The captains and more experienced players pull each of us aside when we make mistakes or are less than stellar, and explain to us what we did wrong and how we can improve.  And we DO improve, immediately, and in the long term.

Sadly, this level of commitment to improvement has not led us to victory yet this season (we've played only two matches).  It has led to some incredible efforts (Lynn diving face first into the mud to stop a try, Ta being pushed over the try line by her feisty forward support, Heimel kicking and sprinting past the other team (and her own team) to catch the kick)! 

Forwards DO ruck!

As Pam said at the end of yesterday's match, our performance was light years better than the weekend before.  And if we can improve to the same degree each week, we'll not get beaten much longer.  And by improve, what I really mean is hopefully some day we can teach Kate that standing there confused about which play we're running *sometimes* counts as obstruction, and that *sometimes* counts as a penalty, and that means we lose the ball.

Baby steps, people.  One lily pad at a time...