ABSTRACT
I was almost 23 when I decided it was a good idea to start playing rugby. My friend Karen and I had seen a poster advertising a women’s rugby team at our university. At the time, it was very unusual for a women’s rugby team to even exist. Perhaps it was for this reason that Karen and I joined the team. The captain of the team was an athletic woman named Sharon, who was doing her master’s degree in pharmacy, which involved some sort of complex laboratory work. It might have been her scientific prowess, or perhaps that she was almost six feet tall, but I found Sharon to be far more competent, strong, and just plain better than I was. I congratulated myself heavily for making it through my very first game without a broken bone.
