Women’s rugby team prepares for inaugural season

The men’s rugby club has been around Tech for twenty six years, but for the first time this coming fall there will be a Tech women’s rugby club.

It all started last fall when Jenny Rainwater, a second year aerospace student, was inspired by the men’s team.

“Last semester I was walking back from the CRC, and I walked past the Burger Bowl and saw the men’s rugby team, and I thought it looked awesome,” Rainwater said.

She next decided to inquire on how she could get involved with rugby.

“I emailed the team over the break and asked whether or not they had a women’s team and what one could do if they wanted to join.”

To her surprise there was no women’s team. The men’s team had tried in the past to recruit girls for a rugby team but no serious interest was ever shown.

“They said the difficulty would be finding enough girls who wanted to play rugby,” Rainwater said.

She offered to head a recruitment endeavor to see if there were any other aspiring ruggers within Tech’s female population.

“I agreed to put forth an effort to find girls, so the men’s team agreed to help us out any way possible,” Rainwater said.

After the break, she came back to campus with the motivation to find girls interested in starting a rugby team. She started out like any other new club on campus—she made fliers to pass out on Skiles.

“In the early weeks we made fliers, and I went with a couple of the guys from the men’s team and started handing out fliers on Skiles. We did lots to get the word out.”

Three weeks in to handing out fliers, not much interest was being shown, for a new rugby team.

“There was only Rachele Klein and me for two or three weeks, but we kept talking to people. We talked to every girl we could find in the gym, every girl we saw passing by, just to see if we could find girls who might be interested in playing,” Rainwater said.

The recruiting paid off. After about four weeks of recruiting, some girls started showing real interest in forming a team.

“Believe it or not, it’s a sport so many people go for. We ended up finding girls everywhere, some that you wouldn’t even think of playing rugby. In about four weeks we had about twelve girls.”

Now with a little over a month left in the spring semester, Rainwater now has enough girls to form a team for the coming fall.

“We have about 19 girls [16 active] that are on our roster now.”

The team also has some help from a local rugby club in the Atlanta area as well as help from the men’s team. The Atlanta Harlequins are one of the top ranked women’s rugby teams in the nation.

“The Atlanta Harlequins are the fourth best women’s rugby club in the United States, and five or six of their players play for the U.S. team. Our three coaches, Stephanie Iacobucci, Shelley Donaldson and Sharon Lau, are members of the Harlequins, and all three are very talented.”

Rugby has also been perceived in the past as a sport that attracts only a select few people.

“People have a misconception that rugby is only for big, tough, huge people who spend hours in the gym and are blood thirsty, but really it’s a sport for all people of all fitness levels, of all talents, of all skills and of all sizes,” Rainwater said.

Women’s rugby will officially become a club sport in the fall of 2006. They will compete in USA Rugby South, in the collegiate women’s division of the Georgia Union. Currently, the team is scrimmaging until the official season begins.

“We want to stress it doesn’t matter what fitness level you are. You’d be amazed to find what awesome people are collected into one group. It’s a better environment than a lot of other sports, and I encourage anyone who is interested to stop by a practice,” Rainwater said.

The team currently practices every Monday and Wednesday 8-10 p.m. at the Burger Bowl, and practices are open to anyone who is interested.

Anyone interested in playing rugby should visit www.georgiatechrugby.com/women.