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Published: August 5th 2014
Issa and I
This is an oldie from my first game played in Fairbanks back in 2011
Photo by Nicole GuantAs soon as I stepped foot out the gate I was dodging a frenzy of people. Massage tables scattered the walkways and hives of slot machines were huddled inconveniently in the center of the walkways. Maneuvering my carry-on luggage through the excitement, I bypassed baggage claim and quickly found myself on the curb of ground transportation. The heat sank into the black of my sleeve covered arms as my eyes adjusted to the light. I took a deep breath. I exhaled thick exhaust while the smell of stale crackers lingered oddly in the air. I rolled my small bag over to the shuttle booth and asked the lady how to get to Bally's Las Vegas.
My bucket list grows almost daily. I want to live in New Zealand and work with the Human Rights Commission for a year (which I will be doing in the near undetermined future). I want to live in Germany and strengthen my language and beer drinking skills. I want to spend an extended period in Thailand getting my massage certification and visiting the small Thai village I lived in over the summer of 2006. I want to live in a cottage on a goat farm
Why I love them
One of my favorite team photos in the hills of Appalachia and write music. I want to work on a vineyard harvesting grapes two hours outside of Seattle. I want to visit Julie in Chicago, and Gwen in Washington D.C. I want to swim in the fountain of youth and ride on the back of a Hippogrif. The list goes on longer than this blog will...
Las Vegas has never had any draw for me nor has it even made it remotely near the bottom of this list. Mainly, I can’t imagine any activities taking place here that would inspire personal growth. That aside, I get anxious in crowds; I think gambling is for those who lack creativity; I detest malls and shopping for the sake of spending money; and despite popular belief, I don’t really like to spend my free time in strip clubs.
So what could possibly draw me to Vegas?
Rugby.
Alaska Rugby
If Juli Ragan had told me the year before that we would be playing on a rugby team together, I would have splashed my drink in her face, looked her straight in the eyes and said, “You clearly do not know me.”
Sideline Spectators
I am not sure what is happening in this photo, but whatever it is, I am sure it is intense. Then, I would have stomped off and brooded in a corner, my blood pulsing heavily as I dwelled on all of the reasons why I detested football: There is more time spent in timeouts then actually playing on the field; the whole financial side is atrociously corrupt and disgusting; the protective gear makes players look like toddlers pumped up on steroids, ramming aimlessly into each other while the refs run around like glorified babysitters. Plus, I despise drinking warm beer out of a plastic cup while onlooking parents shoot sideways glances at me. "My drinking a beer at 4:00 pm on Sunday is not the problem here," I imagine myself telling them.
But on an unexpected Tuesday afternoon in the summer of 2010 I found out that the only thing rugby and football really have in common is that they both are played with a ball in the shape of a prolate spheroid.
I was waiting in my car behind the Sears Mall in Anchorage. This was the meetup spot for the weekly hiking group I lead throughout the summers. The sky above me was a deep blue and cumulonimbus clouds dangeld like a still mobile over the
Chugach Mountains. It was barely 72 degrees out and I had the windows of my Subaru Outback rolled down, my hiking boots kicked off and my barefeet resting on the driverside mirror. It was the perfect day for a hike.
Fifteen minutes later I was still the only one in the lot. I called up Joe.
“Hey, are you on your way?” I asked. She was the only person who had actually said she was going this particular week.
“Oh... I actually am going to play rugby with some girls I met over the weekend.” She said, not apologetic enough for my taste, but she tried to redeem herself by throwing in, “You should come!”
I should come? I thought.
Doesn’t she know that I am the leader of this hiking group and I can’t just abandoned them and go play rugby? She didn’t know that no one showed up.
“Well, it is such a beautiful day for a hike,” I said instead. But I really wasn’t in the mood to go off and hike Flat Top for the 18th time that summer. It was the one place I could hike a mountain alone with
My Favorite Juju
Juju couldn't make it, but she is my bestie. no fear of coming head to head with a bear on the trail. I was torn though. I really wanted to be outside doing something physically challenging, so I reluctantly started to give in. “Well, where are you guys paying?”
“We are meeting over at Davis Park in Mountain View,” She said.
It all seemed so casual. Playing in a park. Who cares if I will be throwing around a stupid ball. Atleast I will be outdoors and running. The summer before I played ultimate frisbee pickup games with my winter soccer team and we had new people come all the time. Jumping in and learning the rules of the game as you played was fun and simple. I assumed this rugby would be the same and I slowly let go of my heated hatred for all things I remotely correlated with football.
“Sure,” I said, the lack of enthusiasm dripping from my voice. “I’ll meet you over there.”
When I arrived at the park, a group of about a dozen girls were jogging around the field while two girls stood near the bleachers. Another was setting up cones. The two talking were doing so quite
seriously next to a large mesh bag full of what I assumed to be rugby balls. As I approached, Joe broke free from the group running as they passed the bleachers and she approached me a little too excitedly.
“Hey! Glad you could come!” She said as we walked towards the two girls talking. “These are our coaches Marissa and Issa.”
Coaches? I thought terrified.
If I had known this was an actual organized team I would have pulled out my smartphone in the parking lot and asked Google some serious questions about what rugby actually was. At that point I didn’t even know that you could only pass the ball backwards.
“This is my friend Rebekah,” she said completing the introduction.
“Great to have you!” Marissa said. “Have you played before?”
“Never,” I said a little too honestly. “I have never even watched a game.”
“Well, we will teach you everything you need to know,” said Issa.
I was trapped.
By this time, the other girls were ending what I now realized was their regular warm up. It was weird to see so many athletic women my age in a single
Frozen Oosik
In Anchorage all of the teams, men's and women's, from around the state gather for a beer in hand game in February. Usually in 3 feet of snow. setting. I had been in Alaska for three years at this point and had struggled to simply lead an all female hiking group.
So this is where they have been hiding, I thought to myself.
Marisa and Joe went over to partake in the first round of drills. These drills, where multiple balls were being thrown and caught while players ran in an organized fashion, involved seamless movement and impeccable eye-hand coordination.Two things I particularly lacked skills in.
Issa puIled me aside and began to explain the basics of the game to me. I felt my mind go numb after she tried to explain what a scrum was. Her excitement was overwhelming and immediately made me even more skeptical.
Suck it up. I told myself.
It is just for this one day and then you can go on with your life and never look back. I must have looked thoroughly confused and frightened.
“It usually takes the average player a year to feel like they actually understand the game,” She admitted, which did me little good because unbeknownst to her I was out high and dry at the end of the two hours. She
spent some time showing me how to properly throw the ball and also how to catch it. After a little bit of back and forth, she brought me over to watch the current drill: Tackling.
In groups of three, the girls moved down the field. The first player threw the ball to a second player about 10 feet away while the third player ran at full speed and slammed into the second player’s waist dragging her to the ground. In the process of being torn from her feet, the second player threw the ball the the first player who by this time was quickly approaching the pile of flailing limbs.
“Ok, so now I will show you the basics of tackling,” Issa told me, her whole face radiating with a love for rugby. “Then you can join in on the drills.”
“But I don’t have a mouth guard!” I said my heart jumping with a joy I haven’t felt since seventh grade when I told my mom I couldn’t go to school because I had just started my second ever menstrual cycle and was suffering from cramps.
“Oh, you’ll be fine!” She said, “We are tacking
from short distances and it is all controlled. You can be in a group with Joe and Ciara. Marisa and I have to talk anyway.”
I was mortified as the reality of the situation sunk in. If I hated anything more than football, it was being forced to play something that I knew I was bound to fail miserably at. But I couldn’t just leave.
All I have to do is get through this two hour practice without breaking a limb or losing a tooth, I told myself.
Then I can walk away … and hopefully with my pride still intact. For the first round I was lucky enough to be the thrower. Easy. I threw the ball to Joe, she caught it just as Ciara dove for her groin. As I ran up to the right of the falling woman, Joe tossed the ball up to me. I caught it. The second round however it was my turn to tackle.
Ok, I thought trying to give myself a pep talk,
You know what to do, now just do it! After my short hesitation I ran, tucked low, and wrapped my arms around Ciara’s thighs.
I managed to get my head safely to the side of her hips before I felt my shoulder impact her lower body. The force of my body’s weight and my tightly wrapped arms brought us to the ground in slow motion. Just before we landed, she tossed the ball off to Joe.
Now on the ground with a woman I had just met between my legs, I was surprised to find myself unhurt. Adrenaline pumped through my limbs and a rush of life flooded through me as I grasped the fact that I had committed to and was successful in my first tackle. Nothing had ever felt so right. I was hooked.
My fourth practice was actually my first “game.” It was a Thursday and we warmed up on the back field while a men’s game took place on the main field. I was a little confused because I didn’t see any other women’s teams warming up.
“Um, are we playing a women’s team?” I asked Roady fearing that we might be going up against the men’s Samoan team that was warming up in the adjacent part of the field.
“Yes,” She said with a big
All Blacks
Team New Zealand. With Onesie and K Money smile on her face. “We are playing ourselves.”
In 2010, there were only two women’s teams in the entirety of the state. The other, Fairbanks, was a seven hour drive away. And though we were not playing them on this day, we played them at larger tournaments about every two weeks or throughout the summer. Because there were only two teams, we were well acquainted with each other. When we went to Fairbanks, we camped out in one of their yards and after the games we went to the lake and swam before the rugby social. In Kenai we all camped out on the pitch together and then went dip net Salmon fishing the next day. In the winter around the start of the Iditarod, all of the Alaska Men's and Women's teams play a game together for Frozen Oosik. This beer in hand game is usually played in three feet of untouched snow. For those who don't know "oosik' means penis bone. I am sure having oosik in the title of several annual rugby events also builds some sort of camaraderie, though I am not sure how.
Having only one opposing team did have its disadvantages. We
Bike for Women
Only one team for the line out....! did not get exposed to different types of playing styles, since we only had to learn how to play one team. Additionally, in those first years one team or another did not have enough players. This meant we had to whore out our own team members to the opposing side. For those not familiar with rugby terminology, a whore is the person who volunteers or is volunteered by the coach to play for the opposing team when they do not have enough numbers. But, having only two Women’s teams did inspire some creative t-shirts that said “Alaska Women’s Rugby: Where 50%!o(MISSING)f the time we are #1 all of the time.”
Building Lasting Friendships
Even more than the game, I grew close to my teammates. Our closeness off of the field may have been accounted for by our closeness on the field. There was something about spending six hours a week diving at each others vaginas that really brought us together. Being huddled in a scrum with two players tightly grasping the underwear of a hooker was also a very intimate experience.
There is also a closeness that comes with bruising and battering one another. You
Crazy Hair!
Volunteering and doing crazy hair. want to play your best at practice so you can grow as a player, but you also don’t want to wound your own teammates. Still, injuries inevitably happened and most of my worse injuries were from my own teammates. During a tackle drill I had caught the ball and Leah pounded into me, her force lifting me up and over her shoulder, slamming my back to the ground and then my head. This was my first rugby related concussion. At another practice I also had the ball and in attempt to stiff arm Jess, I hit her in the face. She walked away with a black eye and I with a jammed pinky finger that took three months to heal. Over the years, I have suffered a few minor concussions, jammed limbs, bloody knees, and bruising that forced me to wear pants to work all summer for fear of being confronted by coworkers about domestic abuse, but overall no major damage. Besides, the friendships that have come out of such wounds have been worth it.
Our relationships soon spread into off field ones. I got to know my teammates as we went camping, fishing and hiking on the weekends.
We had barbeques and Christmas parties. We went skiing and line dancing. We volunteered in the community working with kids, putting together teams for Bike for Women, Run for Women and Ski for Women, and worked on the One Anchorage Campaign, attempting to get a nondiscrimination ordinances passed for the lesbian, bi, gay and transgender individuals.
One of the most difficult parts of leaving Alaska was leaving my rugby family. While I was there, we fundraised to be able to play in a tournament out of state and I was comitted to coming if I was still in the U.S.. Our first out of state competition was arranged for the 2014 National Rugby Sevens Tournament in Las Vegas. This also coincided with the International Sevens Championships. At the time I was working at Tickleberry Manor Goats in Tennessee, much closer to Las Vegas than my fellow Alaska teammates. I had to go.
To Be Continued in Part II...
If you are interested in reading more about the culture of ruby, I recommend checking out this well written and humorous article By Kris Katkus posted on the Alaska Pride website:
http://alaskapride.wordpress.com/category/2012-alaska-pride-blog-roll/just-for-the-gay-of-it/
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Issa Braman
non-member comment
I don't know if this is my favorite entry because there is that sweet picture of us or because I am mentioned or because I get to see you soon at our wedding or because I love you or because of everything.