Current Location: New and Improved Dorm Room - Greencastle - Indiana
My second rugby game was this weekend at Indiana University... which is in Bloomington... which is 45 minutes driving from DePauw. Not bad at all, I'm kind of enjoying the fact that everything is so close here that "roadtrips" are generally under an hour. I'm sure I'm getting spoiled though and that once I'm back home I won't ever want to go on fun travel adventures. I know I will want to drive though, because I miss my Landcruiser a lot. I definitely can't handle the highways here yet... but maybe eventually I'll get those city girl skills.
Anyways, the game. We got there and it started to rain. It was windy too and then some thunder and lightning started to go as we were warming up. Fortunately I did not have to start because I was quite frightened of what this team was going to be like. We later found out that it was mostly their B team, which makes sense since IU is about twenty times the size of DePauw. They were still pretty much beating us, except in the beginning when we had a breakaway for a try.
Once we hit the second half I was completely soaked and shivering on the sidelines. That's when I got to sub in for our outside center of the back line, Banta. She's a beast on the field, I hope to be like her someday. :) Anyways, so I changed into a nice muddy pair of rugby shorts and a soaked jersey and ran out on the field to face these IU girls. I actually didn't get to do a single bit of offensive play, but I made up for it with defense. My favorite tackle was on a kickoff to IU. The ball had gone to a girl that was pretty much in front of me so I just started sprinting. She kind of fumbled the ball a little when she caught it so she really didn't get much forward movement in at all before I just plowed into her. It felt really good. The other tackles ...not so much. I got the wind knocked out of me a couple times, which is not fun at all. Especially in pouring down rain and with cleats that are full of water that feel like they are going to fly off my feet when I run.
The best/worst part of the match came when there was about ten minutes left of play time. In the scrum a few IU girls had been complaining about high tackling and other stuff and kept yelling obscenities at us. After one of these little outbursts, something happened and two IU girls ended up rolling around and throwing punches at one of our girls. The ref took a bit to break it up and had the two teams separate to opposite sides. We were all just kind of staring around trying to figure out what was going on. Our girl had a cut above her eye that was bleeding pretty profusely and she was on the ground with a couple other DePauw players who were trying to clean her up and check to make sure she was okay. It was about at this point that one of our captains Lauren told us to pack up and that we were going home without finishing the game.
I must say it was rather exciting to be a part of this little brawl. We grabbed all of our stuff and were just walking to our cars when the two IU captains stopped us and apologized about those girls. Lauren handled it really well by saying if IU ever wanted to play us again, those girls would not be allowed to participate... basically we walked out of there with pride. My car of girls ended up going to lunch in our soaking and muddy rugby uniforms once we got back to DePauw... and although I was freezing the whole time it was worth it to feel part of a badass rugby team. The shower I took afterwards is now the best shower I have ever had.... EVER!
All in all, it was a learning experience and I hope to have a bit more confidence in our next game which I think is against Earlham. I'll definitely let you know how that goes...
My second rugby game was this weekend at Indiana University... which is in Bloomington... which is 45 minutes driving from DePauw. Not bad at all, I'm kind of enjoying the fact that everything is so close here that "roadtrips" are generally under an hour. I'm sure I'm getting spoiled though and that once I'm back home I won't ever want to go on fun travel adventures. I know I will want to drive though, because I miss my Landcruiser a lot. I definitely can't handle the highways here yet... but maybe eventually I'll get those city girl skills.
Anyways, the game. We got there and it started to rain. It was windy too and then some thunder and lightning started to go as we were warming up. Fortunately I did not have to start because I was quite frightened of what this team was going to be like. We later found out that it was mostly their B team, which makes sense since IU is about twenty times the size of DePauw. They were still pretty much beating us, except in the beginning when we had a breakaway for a try.
Once we hit the second half I was completely soaked and shivering on the sidelines. That's when I got to sub in for our outside center of the back line, Banta. She's a beast on the field, I hope to be like her someday. :) Anyways, so I changed into a nice muddy pair of rugby shorts and a soaked jersey and ran out on the field to face these IU girls. I actually didn't get to do a single bit of offensive play, but I made up for it with defense. My favorite tackle was on a kickoff to IU. The ball had gone to a girl that was pretty much in front of me so I just started sprinting. She kind of fumbled the ball a little when she caught it so she really didn't get much forward movement in at all before I just plowed into her. It felt really good. The other tackles ...not so much. I got the wind knocked out of me a couple times, which is not fun at all. Especially in pouring down rain and with cleats that are full of water that feel like they are going to fly off my feet when I run.
The best/worst part of the match came when there was about ten minutes left of play time. In the scrum a few IU girls had been complaining about high tackling and other stuff and kept yelling obscenities at us. After one of these little outbursts, something happened and two IU girls ended up rolling around and throwing punches at one of our girls. The ref took a bit to break it up and had the two teams separate to opposite sides. We were all just kind of staring around trying to figure out what was going on. Our girl had a cut above her eye that was bleeding pretty profusely and she was on the ground with a couple other DePauw players who were trying to clean her up and check to make sure she was okay. It was about at this point that one of our captains Lauren told us to pack up and that we were going home without finishing the game.
I must say it was rather exciting to be a part of this little brawl. We grabbed all of our stuff and were just walking to our cars when the two IU captains stopped us and apologized about those girls. Lauren handled it really well by saying if IU ever wanted to play us again, those girls would not be allowed to participate... basically we walked out of there with pride. My car of girls ended up going to lunch in our soaking and muddy rugby uniforms once we got back to DePauw... and although I was freezing the whole time it was worth it to feel part of a badass rugby team. The shower I took afterwards is now the best shower I have ever had.... EVER!
All in all, it was a learning experience and I hope to have a bit more confidence in our next game which I think is against Earlham. I'll definitely let you know how that goes...
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