Why I love Georgia’s great outdoors: Rugby
My dad can’t believe I’ve started playing a full-contact sport in my mid-20s,” she panted, bent at the waist, her sweat leaving wet dots on the dusty field at Coan Park in Edgewood.
I smiled knowingly. I too was a rookie with the High Country Women’s Rugby Football Club, a five-year-old team of adults who play traditional 7-a-side or 15-a-side rugby in matches and tournaments across the Southeast, complete with full tackles, while wearing only a mouth guard (and maybe a soft cap) for protection.
I also smiled because I’m not in my mid-20s. At 50 years old, I am by far the oldest person on our team of about 20 players, and I have gleefully signed up for the associated collisions and crashes.
What is wrong with me? I played soccer and tennis as a kid, and field hockey and lacrosse in college. Since then, I have sought to recapture that adrenalized feeling of competition and camaraderie by playing in adult leagues and completing races, mud runs, and overnight endurance events. Though I’ve “enjoyed” all these activities—I don’t know what endorphins feel like; I only know how good it feels to hit a finish line—something has been missing.
I’d been rugby-adjacent for many years, friends with members of the women’s team and the men’s squad, which was founded in 1975. They’d long urged me to come to a practice. “You don’t need to know what you’re doing,” they’d say. “The best way to learn is to just play.”
I hadn’t tried to learn an entirely new sport since childhood, and this one felt particularly made up, like Quidditch, with rules about how you can only throw the ball backward and tackles don’t stop play. There were words I didn’t understand—like scrum, ruck, and maul—and rules I kept breaking, like being offside on defense. I could catch the oblong ball, though, and my job as a personal trainer gave me the strength and stamina.
The team was amazingly welcoming, cheering me when I screwed up at my first practice and awarding me “Bitch of the Pitch” for my effort. I’d never experienced this in sports before. My college teammates are my sisters for life, but there was a high bar set for skill, and certain kinds of bodies tended to perform better than others. On this team, every kind of body is welcomed and valued—rugby needs fast people, strong people, big people, short people—and that’s incredible to experience.
At the end of my second practice, with my first match looming, I approached a friend of mine who has played for more than 12 years and is a certifiable beast on the pitch. “Hit me,” I said. “I need to know what it feels like.”
“Do you want me to go 70 percent? Eighty?” she asked.
“They’re not gonna go less than 100 percent in the match.”
She stepped back as I clutched the ball and bit hard on my mouth guard.
Then she ran at me. And she absolutely leveled me.
It was almost offensive. “We’re friends!” I wanted to yell. “Why would you do that to me?”
But then I realized it was what I’d asked for, and part of the game. I had her hit me three more times, and each time I got less offended and more accustomed to the feeling of flying off my feet. I learned to fall properly and hold on to the ball.
Every week we have new players show up to practice, and suddenly, after less than six months, I’m actually in a position to help the newbies. There’s still so much I don’t know—I can’t seem to pull off a “loop” or a “switch”—but I’m loving the learning process.
The only injury I’ve sustained so far came when an opponent stiff-armed me with a fist to the collarbone and throat (the stiff-arm was legal; the fist, not so much, but the referee—known as the “sir”—didn’t see that part).
And if you’re wondering, yes, I’ve tackled people to the ground. At 100 percent. And just like the experience of being on this team, it feels amazing.
Want to play rugby?
The High Country Women’s Rugby Football Club can be contacted via Instagram
at @highcountrywrfc.
The men’s squad can be found at @highcountryrugbyfc.
Other teams in the metro area include:
Atlanta Harlequins Women’s Rugby Football Club
Atlanta Bucks Rugby Football Club, which focuses on the queer community
Atlanta 2.0 Selects Rugby Club, a women’s club based in Kennesaw
Alpharetta Exiles
Christine Van Dusen is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Atlanta magazine, Garden & Gun, and numerous other publications. In addition to playing rugby, she is a fitness coach and musician.
This article appears in our August 2024 issue.
The post Why I love Georgia’s great outdoors: Rugby appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.
At the age of 50, I joined a women’s rugby football club and found a true sense of camaraderie.
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