Sore. Every muscle in my body is screaming at me due to the 7-hour rugby camp I elected to attend yesterday. Shout-out to the Glendale Raptors women! These ladies hosted the camp and offered their expertise and facilities at no charge to growing teams in the area. Their goal was to promote safe rugby and progress the sport, especially for women as we are so often left to our own coaching devices due to lack of funding, spotty commitment from players, and the absence of facilities. Not to bring on a pity party, we did just fine at Kent State and had a blast doing it!
The most impressive part of the day was learning from women my age, who are svelte-er than I have EVER been, and watching them teach the game. There was no screaming about "champions getting up even when they can't" or "digging deep" while I rupture something or feel my muscles sliding around under my pansy, turf-torn flesh. This wasn't a competitive camp, its sole purpose was rugby education. The Raptor ladies were humble and bad-ass at the same time and genuinely love the sport they have worked so hard to play. We covered everything from appropriate scrum techniques to ball handling to safe tackling; offense and defense general strategy and articulation of field positioning. Great for our new girls and I learned new things every drill...mostly that I'm out of shape. I was in good company though, one girl got up from being tackled and said "Oh yeah, the muffin top pinch, just a little reminder that it's the beginning of the season..."
To add to my awe of Glendale's rugby program, we played at Infinity Park, right outside the same-name stadium. That's right rugby folk, I said STADIUM!!!!! For RUGBY! Try-posts, seating, and everything. Seriously, click on the link.
The Fort Collins team showed with 7 ladies and I say ladies because we certainly aren't girls anymore. I am 27 and hate the words "I'm too old to do that anymore", especially from my peers. We're not "OLD"! There are 70-year olds who run marathons so let's get over ourselves people! That said, there IS a significant difference in how tackling affects me now versus when I started almost 10 years ago. There were many moments yesterday when the team almost collectively decided to make ourselves the Fort Collins Cranky Old Bitches. Anyone available to be our mascot?
All in all, it was as great though painful kick-off to our season of conditioning, scrimmaging, grant seeking for travel and jersey funds and getting our name out there in the community. Check us out on Facebook AND our new website!!! Fort Collins Women's Rugby The bio page is pretty funny. Stay tuned for more details of excruciating fun and team bonding!
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