Bloodletting Duck women's rugby team leads the Pac Northwest. BY DARRICK MENEKEN Krista Gust pushed an ice pack against her jaw and stared out at the rugby field. "Looks like I got kneed in the face," she said, smiling and removing the ice to reveal a large purple welt swelling at the end of her chin. Jumper Jamie Douglas gets a lift from her teammates during a line out play in January at the Stanford Invitational. On the sidelines, close to a hundred fans screamed as the UO women's rugby team continued its onslaught of visiting Western Washington. The Dirty Ducks, as Oregon calls itself, ended up winning 95-0 last Saturday at Riverfront Field, the perfect end to a perfect league home season. Gust is the dirtiest of the lot, a 22-year-old All-American who also plays on the under-23 U.S. women's national team. "It is a violent sport," she said, grass and mud stains streaked across her once-white shorts. "That's what makes it fun though. Getting out there and hitting someone. You don't get the same type of satisfaction from any other sport." Women's rugby is played under the same set of rules as the men's game. Yes, they tackle. A few players wear soft shoulder protection under their jerseys and thin scrum caps to protect their ears. Otherwise, pads is a four-letter word. The game is best described as a combination of soccer, football and personal assault. As they say: "Give blood; play rugby." "If you ask anybody on this team, I'm sure they have some sort of injury that they're playing through," Gust says. "The girls who get out there and have this kind of mentality, there's something special and maybe a little crazy about them." A week before blowing out Western Washington, the Ducks came from behind to knock off OSU in Corvallis. During that game, 20-year-old junior Shana Simpson lay motionless at midfield when medics, red lights flashing, drove up and delivered a stretcher. "I love it," Simpson said later, having walked off with what she described as a mild back spasm. "We sacrifice our bodies for this game." They also invent their own language. An injury stoppage is called blood time. Post game socials are known as drink-ups. "You go and beat the crap out of each other for 80 minutes, and then you go and you party," says Kara Winek, a second-year player. "You all get together and you eat and you sing." For some, the emotional switch can be tricky. "I'm having trouble talking right now because I'm so amped," said senior Ramey Marshall, eyes glazed, body shaking, voice quivering, following the OSU game. "I can't explain it. It's so intense. As long as you're on the field, hitting somebody, it makes you feel really good." Lifting her arms, Marshall exposed a pattern of yellow and tan bruises. "What, these ones?" she asked. "That's from last game. I actually don't think I did too bad today. Cuts and bruises, but not too bad. We've had some pretty bad ones." A week earlier, playing against Reed, one player limped off with a long vertical cleat cut bleeding down her inside thigh. Another left with an asthma attack. Keeled over, hands on her knees, Kata Bahnsen-Reinhardt sucked desperately on an inhaler. "I can't breathe, my elbow hurts, my knee hurts," she gasped. "If you can't stand the pain, get out of the game." A week later, she returned to the starting lineup. Each team fields 15 players. The scoring consists of five points for placing the ball down in the try zone (located at each end of the field) and two for the kick (similar to a field goal) that follows. Unlike football, only backward passes or laterals are allowed. Oregon has clinched a spot in the April 1-2 regional tournament at Stanford. The Ducks (4-0) play at Reed this Saturday and at Western Washington the following week before heading south. Along with OSU, those teams make up the Pacific Northwest Rugby Football Union Women's Collegiate Division I league and play each other twice during the season. At UO, women's rugby is a club sport, funded by student incidental fees, player dues and fund-raising. There are no scholarships and no financial backing from the university athletic department. "It takes a ton of dedication," says sixth-year head coach Greg Farrell. "We demand a lot." That includes three days a week of practice and a road schedule that takes them to Washington, Montana and California. How do people outside the rugby scene see them? "I think they respect us a lot," says Marshall, who last Sunday set a single-game team record with five tries. Others have a more stereotypical reaction. "Some people are like, 'Whoa, a women's rugby player, she's got to be a lesbian or something,'" says Winek. "But it's not the way it is at all." To these players, none of that matters. "I feel a lot of pride being a rugby player," Gust says. "I feel like I can be out there with the guys. We're setting a whole other tone for women's sports." Darrick Meneken is a Eugene-based freelance writer and a first-year student in the UO masters program in literary nonfiction. He has never given blood.
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