Saturday, June 7, 2008

Always a Breaker, now a Lion

Before I even moved here to NYC I did some research on the rugby scene here and checked out my options. There is a Div 1 team here, the NY Women's side, but they are way good and way intense about practices, training sessions, etc. While I have no doubt that I would have a good time, I don't anticipate being able to commit a whole lot of time to rugby, especially in fall when 15s start. The team I was most excited to check out was the Village Lions. They practice on the Lower East Side (heretofore known as the LES), which is not super close to me, but not too hard to get to. They just started their 7s season for the summer, so I decided to come out to training this week.

I'm not sure how I feel about 7s as a version of rugby (thank god the games are only 15-20 minutes, otherwise I might die), but the ladies are really great and we co-practice with the men as well. Coming from a team like Seattle where we have little interaction with the men, its nice to see a team that has a good relationship with them. One of them even got me drunk on Thursday after practice (thanks Steve!)

7s involves a totally different set of skills than 15s does, and as the coach said Thursday, we all have to re-learn our bad habits for 7s. Want to run sideways, rather than forward, to take up time? Go ahead! Basketball pass the ball over your head to someone across the field? Why not? When we're playing touch with the men, it looks more like a crazy game of hot potato than rugby. I hope that this week we'll do some tackling so that I can feel slightly normal again.

So far I've gone to the bar post-practice Tuesday and Thursday (closed the bar on Thursday and ended up wandering Manhattan, didn't get home until 4:30am!) and we went to go watch the US men's select XV play against England select XV last night. Today there is some sort of bbq going on and then I'm going to a Lesbian Frat Boy party hosted by Aneal. Its been since Molly's birthday that I've played flip cup and I'm starting to go through withdrawals. Just wish Alison, Jo, Sarah, or Lauren were here to be my Beirut partners. Oh well, guess I'll just have to stick to what I'm good at- shot-guns!

Hope you're having a great day. Its 92 degrees here and I'm melting.

1 comment:

Alison said...

oh flip cup... we had the beer olympics last night! unfortunately jo, sarah, and hero were all out of town this weekend, but my team won roboboot! it was a pretty sweet fundraiser with awesome turnout. definitely a good time - you would have enjoyed it :-)