Outside center Guste Rubikaite gets tackled during a Women’s Rugby Club match. Rubikaite is one of the captains of the Women’s Rugby Club." />
Courtesy of NCSU Women’s Rugby Facebook
Outside center Guste Rubikaite gets tackled during a Women’s Rugby Club match. Rubikaite is one of the captains of the Women’s Rugby Club.
Head out to Method Fields on a Tuesday or Thursday night at NC State and you may see what looks like a group of women playing pickup football. That is, until someone is tackled, loses the ball and play immediately reverses direction without ever stopping.
This isn’t pickup football; it’s the NC State women’s club rugby team playing what team captain Brittany Carson, a fourth-year studying natural resources who is a lock and an eighth man, describes as a “high-paced, high action” game. Carson, the senior leader on a team of close to 40 players, has been on the team all of her four years at NC State.
“I came from a kung fu background,” Carson said. “When I came to college I was like ‘I need something that is pretty hands-on and tough,’ and I found rugby.”
According to Carson, she got the hang of rugby in a similar time frame as many of the other players on the team, within a semester. The idea of her teammates discovering their hidden rugby talent is something that excites the team’s senior leader.
“Just about everybody who is here had never played rugby or even heard of it,” Carson said. “Give them a semester and they are already starting players.”
The team’s roster has roughly 40 players and of those, 23 are allowed to dress out for a conference match. The team also has two coaches, Kathryn “Red” Walls and Adrian Edwards, and the program is headed by Jeff Sommers. In addition to the coaches and program director, the team is captained by Guste Rubikaite, a fourth-year studying electrical engineering, and Carson.
The women’s club rugby program was founded in 1994 after years of playing co-ed with the men. Starting off as a small program, the club team has continued to rise in popularity. According to Edwards, the team has a lot of new faces this semester.
Although rugby is typically associated with bone-crunching hits and the physicality that leads to those hits, Carson had a few words for any women who are thinking about playing but may be concerned about the physicality.
“You do have to work hard and get the form correct,” Carson said. “But if you’re tackling correctly, nothing should happen.”
Carson spoke about how every team she has encountered has been accepting of everyone who has never played or even heard of the sport, and that she hopes this accepting nature of rugby will convince more girls and women of all ages to start playing.
As far as the season is concerned, Edwards said the first half of the year was a rebuilding one for the team.
“We had a lot of injuries we had to overcome,” Edwards said.
Despite injuries and the “rebuild,” the team did find some success in the fall. NC State finished in second place at the Rucktoberfest tournament in Boone, suggesting maybe the team is reloading rather than rebuilding, and is ready to compete.
The club is almost back playing in the spring semester after a busy fall, but that is normal for the team that has a school-year long schedule.
“Rugby never really stops,” Walls said. “Aside from Christmas break and spring break.”
If any potential women’s rugby players are out there and thinking about playing, Walls put it pretty bluntly that the sport was for anybody that wanted to give it a try.
“Anytime someone comes to our team and says ‘hey, teach me to play rugby,’ we say ‘absolutely, put some shoes on. Let’s go,” Walls said.
The NC State women’s club rugby team’s next match will come at Method Fields against Fort Bragg next month.