Nice Cleats, Wanna Ruck?
A personal invitation from the Brown women’s rugby team
By Cecilia Kiely

This weekend is Homecoming and Parents’ Weekend all in one. The Brown administration has combined conventional collegiate activities and your parents—a combination that I’m sure will cause at least a few problems for most of you. Fortunately, attending the rugby game tomorrow morning is the solution to all potential dilemmas.

Dilemma #1. You want to go to a big game for Homecoming Weekend.
You want to see players tackle each other trying to gain possession of an oval-shaped ball. You want to spend a few hours on Saturday on the sidelines of a grassy field with white chalked lines and uprights at either end. You want to yell “Go Bruno!” But you obviously can’t go to the Homecoming Football Game because that is not non-conformist enough. So go watch the women’s rugby game instead. Make a public statement that you’re not going to the football game by going all the way down to the stadium and then walking right past any tailgaters that may be in the parking lot on your way to the rugby field across the street. If you’ve learned nothing else, going to Brown should have taught you that protesting is fun.

Dilemma #2: You don’t know what to do with your parents on Saturday morning of Parents’ Weekend.
You don’t want to take them to brunch because combining breakfast and lunch was done only to create a meal where you are unable to avoid answering questions (you can only pretend to choke on your pancakes for so long). Take your parents to the rugby game. Since rugby is a fairly confusing sport for the first-time spectator, watching a rugby match will serve as a perfect way to distract your parents from asking those awkward questions. They might ask you why ball keeps getting passed backwards, but while your parents are trying to figure out what is happening in the big blob of players (it’s called a scrum), they won’t get around to asking you why you decided to drop out of the PLME program or why you are taking next semester off to work on an organic farm in New Zealand or why you never call them.

Dilemma #3: You are wrestling with neither Dilemma #1 nor Dilemma #2. No worries, there are still several reasons why you should come to the rugby game. Maybe you are one of the thirty-seven Brown students with school spirit. In this case, you should come support your school by cheering on the women’s rugby team to their first-ever league title. The game will get over just in time for you to paint your face and run across the street to the football game.

But maybe you don’t really care that winning this game will put Brown in a good position to make it to the national tournament for the first time. So why should you take the time to come to see the game? Well, first of all, you probably know someone on the team. Are you taking “Burden of Disease in Developing Countries?” So is half the rugby team. Have you ever gone to Pulse? Chances are you’ve seen a rugby player. You’ve probably bought a muffin from a rugby player (or at least someone vaguely associated with the rugby team) at the Blue Room. Eat in the Ratty? The girl with the bruises on her arms sitting at the table next to you—she plays rugby. And the “Love Your Body Day Streaker,” the girl identified only as “Legs and Eggs,” who ran a lap around the Main Green on Wednesday at noon—yeah, she’s a rugger, too.

You may underestimate how many rugby players you actually know because if you ask someone on the team if they know your friends that play rugby (Rebecca and Lindsay), they might say no. But that doesn’t mean that Bec and Tonka aren’t two valuable members of the team. Some rookies don’t know that PJ’s real name is Megan or that Spech is just a nickname, a shortened version of her real name—Special K.

But don’t just do it for us—rugby players you know, rugby players you think you know, rugby players you worship from a distance—come to the game because rugby is fun to watch. Rugby is similar to several sports that you may be familiar with, only better. It’s like football, but with no pads. It’s like basketball only you aren’t penalized for throwing opponents to the ground when they have the ball. It’s definitely better than cheerleading, even when they do cool things like throwing people in the air. Cheerleaders always toss up some ridiculously small girl—we hoist 6-foot former volleyball players into the air by their shorts. A typical rugby game consists of 80 minutes of rucking, mauling and scrumming down. And what rugby is all about is girls tackling each other and wrestling in the mud, but in an empowering way, of course.

So come to the game tomorrow. The rugby field is located directly across from the stadium parking lot and kickoff is at 10 am. Bring your parents, bring your friends, bring those people that you don’t really want to hang out with but feel obligated to invite places. And don’t worry about showing up to a game now after not supporting us all season. We love a fan in fair weather, because you’ll come again.