Junior Molly Carr carries the ball against Colorado College in a game last fall.
The University of Wyoming Women’s club rugby team has all the smash-mouth action of football, with the finesse and endurance required on the soccer pitch. The club’s season began in the fall and came to a close last weekend.
Molly Carr, a junior studying criminal justice and three-year member as well as the captain of the club, described the experience as a hybrid of varying types of sports.
“It combines a lot of sports into one, which is really fun,” Carr said. “It has all of the great aspects of sports like soccer and football all rolled together.”
The women’s rugby team has been strong in the past years. Last season the team was ranked 8th in the nation and went to nationals. But in order to compete at nationals, the squad needs to have an undefeated record, which UW did not have this season.
The sole game the team lost this year was due to numbers, not performance on the field.
“We had to forfeit one game this year, and that kept us out of nationals,” Carr said. “We did not have enough girls to play the game, which sucked. That was our only loss on the year.”
Having enough players to field a full 15-person team has been a struggle this year. Carr said that the team graduated a lot of seniors from last year, so this has been a rebuilding year. However, even playing with fewer girls against other teams has not stopped the wins from coming.
“We beat Colorado College when we only had 11 girls to the its 15. CC beats other schools when it is 15 on 15, so that was a great win for us,” Carr said. “We are just better than the other teams.”
Shaye Lanouette, a junior studying biology who also has played all three years at the university, said she loves being on the rugby team, but that it was an interesting transition to rugby from other sports she played in high school.
“Rugby is way different than anything I have ever played,” Lanouette said. “It took me a long time to learn it.”
Lanouette is a forward on the team, which is generally where the larger and stronger girls play. The playing style at UW puts more emphasis on the forwards rather than the backs, which are the smaller and quicker players.
But Carr and Lanouette are trying to transition to a more back-saturated game.
“[At Nationals last season] it was way different. The West uses a lot more of the backs.” Carr said. “We are trying to do that too because we have shorter girls on our team.”
Senior Macey Burden fights for the ball in a line-out against Colorado College.
So the overhaul is in the works in both the playing style and roster. But it has been hard to keep players coming back past once the season begins.
“About 90 percent of the girls that show up for the first practice never come back,” Carr said. “It is a brutal sport so that is probably why.”
Lanouette attributes this to the confusing nature of the sport to a first-time player.
“I’m sure it is confusing at the first practice when you don’t know any of the rules or even the terms like rucking, scrumming and mauling,” Lanouette said.
Despite these factors and the disappointment of missing out on nationals, Carr still encourages any girl on campus “to at least try it out,” not just for the sport, but for the friendships that are created as the season goes on.
“Once you give it a chance and play your first game, it is so much fun,” Carr said. “Especially afterwards when you start bonding with other teams. We have team socials where we just order pizza, drink beer and sing rugby songs. It is a strong community.”
