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| The bumper sticker my daughter made for her high-school team. |
It’s a rough sport, sometimes described as “football without helmets,” but unlike
football, a rugby game doesn’t stop when someone’s been tackled. If a player is
tackled before she can toss the ball to a teammate, she is supposed to place
the ball on her team’s side of the field, then cover her head. Why? Because
both teams are going to rush over and fight for the ball, over her prone body,
using their feet, in something called a ruck.
It looks horrible.
But I’m not so sure
it is. Rugby prides itself on being rough, but it’s not like my daughter is
driving a race car at 100 mph or riding a race horse at 40, or even crashing
into other players, protected by helmet, face guard and extensive pads, like
football players are. The protective gear in rugby is minimal, generally just a
mouthguard. The kids are trying to pull each other down, using their bare
hands. Aggressive, but on a human scale.
Sports in general are rough. This came as news to me
because I never played. I am bemused when my daughter, after a game (of soccer or
rugby), happily catalogues her bruises and scrapes. “Badges of honor,” she
calls them.
Something else slithers across my mind. Are people going to
be mean to her about her “unfeminine” sport? She spends her days surrounded by
high-school girls, many of whom are deeply insecure and deeply competitive,
always watching each other for the slightest deviation from a standard they don’t
understand is impossible for any of them to live up to, always looking to take
each other down. Not physically, but with words. Seems far worse than getting
tackled.
Maybe all girls should play rugby.
(This, by the way, is a nice personal essay by a woman about why she loves to play rugby.)
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