Le Rugby!

(actually late Tuesday night)

I was so happy to wake up this morning to happy Patriots news! I didn’t buy the NFL radio package this year because it will be too difficult for me to listen to the Pats games with the time difference here in France. I liked the throw-back unis more than I thought I would. Plus, it was so great to see Tom Brady back in action :)

On the subject of violent, contact sports, I had rugby practice last night! One of the goals of my program is to find activities that allow us to hang out with French students and have some fun. Of course, I wanted to join un équipe. For me, that is one of the easiest ways to make friends. I now realize that in my athletic career, sure the actual games and practices are fun, and of course I care about winning, but it’s my teammates that I remember most. Here in France, it doesn’t really matter what sport I play, just that I get to have a team. I wanted to play rugby because I have never tried it before and it looks really fun! Plus I get a little exercise and some normalcy in going to practice le lundi à 18h au Stade Max Roussié. Not gonna lie, I am a bit sore today. I felt it as soon as I woke up this morning.

It was a bit of a challenge to find un équipe féminine de rugby. In France, sports are organized very differently from back home. Here, everything is what we consider to be club teams. Teams are usually organized by school but they are not officially sponsored by the school. Ténimba, the Vassar-Wesleyan Program Assistante, helped me find Les Gorettes, the girls rugby team from École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI, not to be confused with a rival school/rugby team ESCPI or Paris Tech, booo). Most teams are affiliated with La Fédération Francaise de Rugby, the national body that oversees all the rugby clubs. However, non-French citoyens aren’t allowed to play unless there is an equal exchange of players with a foreign team (very complicated = I can’t play for an FFR team). I had pretty much given up all hope of finding a team when Ténimba got an email back from the captain of Les Gorettes. They were very happy to welcome me to their team even though I will most certainly not be taking classes at the Superior School of Physics and Industrial Chemistry. It is very random that I am playing with them but whatever, I have a team!

Practice was pretty fun, even though it was really basic rugby. We did a couple drills and even got to scrimmage a big. The first time I lined up to practice hitting, I was a little nervous. In hockey, we have so much padding that you barely feel a thing when you use your body. I didn’t think I would be that nervous for rugby! Once I did it a couple times I got it down but it is still a little scary.

I didn’t have too much trouble understanding everything the coach said during practice. Obviously, I didn’t understand every word but since it was practice, the verbal directions were followed by a demonstration. It is hard for me to judge how much I learned from the coach’s instructions and how much I just learned by watching him show us how to do everything. I have always learned by watching coaches/teammates demonstrate so it really wasn’t all that different for me. I am learning some fun new vocab though. Je te plaque (I tackle you!) Tu est la plaqueuse! (You are the girl being tackled!). At the end of practice we also did les pompes (push-ups) and les abdos (abs). The other girls seem really nice so far and I hope that I can get to know them better during the semester. Although, now that I think about it, in the immediate future I will probably being doing more tackling than talking!

Bonne nuit!