BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published April 21, 2011

Three years ago, I sat down to write my first sports column for the Phoenix. Although I had been a sports enthusiast and news reporter for years, I had never attempted to combine the two pursuits, so I was understandably a little nervous. Of course I had not made things any easier for myself by making my first ever opinions piece a disapproving review of a new NCAA drug testing policy. But then again, the goal I had set for myself in that first semester as a sports writer was anything but easy: I was going to turn Swat into a campus as crazy about sports as I am.

As anyone who has read this column before probably knows, that is no small feat as I am not the average sports fan. I check sports blogs like most college students check Facebook or LikeALittle. Instead of covering the walls of my dorm room with pictures of movie stars or friends from back home, I covered them with newspaper cutouts of my favorite pitchers and a statistical breakdown of the NHL season month by month. Some would call knowing the addresses of the entire Sharks roster stalking; I call it being well informed.

I knew that making others this sports-obsessed was unlikely since there are always a few other things occupying the minds of Swat’s best and brightest (genocide, global warming and world hunger, to name a few). But I hope over the last few years I have at least shown that being as smart as most Swatties are does not disqualify you from being a sports fan as well.

In fact, it does not disqualify you from being a sports participant, either. Proving this point, that anyone can be an athlete if they want to, has been my most recent project. In my last semester of college, most likely more out of nostalgia, or better yet denial, for my dearly departed athletic career than out of an attempt to prove a point, I decided to challenge myself to learn an entirely new sport. And the sport I chose was rugby. Whether it came across in my (failed) attempt to chronicle it online or not, rugby this semester has been quite the adventure.

The first few weeks of rugby can only be described as confusing. It wasn’t even the kind of confusing where you ask a lot of annoying questions; it was the deer-in-headlights confusing where you don’t even know what questions to ask. But then again, what else could it have been like trying to learn a sport I had never even watched before? Thanks to some very patient teammates, the number of absent expressions I had during practice was reduced as I slowly figured out how to pass backwards and not injure myself tackling others (oddly, I seem to hurt myself more when tackling than when being tackled).

Of course the small amount of confidence I had built over the first three weeks of the season quickly vanished as our first game approached and I came to the haunting realization that Penn was probably not going to be as easygoing about me forgetting the rules as my teammates had been. The first 20 minutes of that game I didn’t actually touch the ball since I was torn between joining in on the chaos and running as fast as I could in the other direction. But at one point you have to forget that you have no idea what you are doing and just start hitting people; committing to a bad decision is better than not committing to any decision in rugby. Once I did, I stopped watching the game and started to have fun playing it. And just like that, I was hooked.

The weeks after the first game have been a blur of firsts. The team played in its first tournament in DC, I scored my first try against Widener and I even somehow managed to complete a dropkick goal (no one was as surprised as I was that it actually worked) against Bryn Mawr. If anyone had told me at the beginning of this adventure that I would not only have fun playing rugby but would actually fall in love with the sport, I don’t think I would have believed them. Because of this crazy experiment, I have found an amazing new group of friends and a new passion. I may still be in the honeymoon phase of my new relationship with rugby, but it has definitely put a smile on my face the last few months. I have reached the end of my college athletic career, but I hope this is only the beginning of my time with rugby and the girls here who have taught me how to play it.

As the semester, and thus my short stay on the Swarthmore women’s rugby team, comes to an end, I find myself wishing I had taken up this challenge in my first semester as a sports columnist instead of my last. Nevertheless, the semester must end and the rugby season with it, but not without a bit of fun. Thus I cordially invite the Swarthmore community to attend Prom Dress Rugby this Saturday at 1 p.m. right here on Cunningham field. That’s right. We will be playing rugby … in prom dresses. If you ever are going to take my advice about sports, make it showing up to this game. Perhaps it will even convince you to follow my lead and sign up to play next season.

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