Freshman prop/8-man Colleen Carey attempts to evade a player from the Air Force Academy during their match on Oct. 11, 2009. The Buffs beat the Air Force Academy 7-3. (CU Independent file/Lee Pruitt)
The Colorado women’s rugby team knows a thing or two about hard work and success.
They proved just that during a fall season full of wins, and the team is ready to keep the ball rolling well into the spring.
Just over a month ago, the Buffaloes got first place at the Stanford Invitational. They said they hope to succeed again as they host the Boulder Babes at the CU Business Field at 11 a.m. Saturday.
The Babes are a non-collegiate, West Division I rugby club.
Senior prop and president of the CU rugby club Kodi Kassell said that this distinction makes the game different than the ones against other college teams.
“A lot of them have actually been playing rugby for a lot longer than most of the girls on our team,” Kassell said. “So it becomes a different game because rugby definitely is ‘the more you know the better you play.’”
Despite this gap in experience, the Buffs feel confident that they will do well against the Babes. Captain Becca Wezensky said she looks forward to the younger players getting minutes against an experienced team.
“We have a lot of young girls who are going to get some playing time [hopefully against the Babes],” said the junior fly-half/center. “It’ll mainly a learning experience for us and a chance to try these girls out at new positions.”
The beginning of the season has been crucial to training the newcomers and improving the team as a whole as they have worked heavily on advancing their collective fitness.
Wezensky helps lead mandatory fitness days in which the girls work on sprinting, long distance running, and strength training. She said she has seen how important this change in training has been for the team and how it’s helped bring the squad closer together.
Along with increasing their physical fitness, the team has also worked on increasing its knowledge of the fundamentals of the game.
“We took a step back from where we were and took some time to train [the new girls],” Wezensky said. “At the same time, we were working on fundamentals, all of the key elements of rugby like passing and body position and running support lines.”
Perhaps the hardest part of rugby is making all these elements come together with great teamwork and communication.
“I would say coming together as a team is probably the hardest part,” Wezensky said. “Everyone’s position to a certain degree is very specialized. So not only do you have to have a good understanding of your own position, but you have to understand what everyone else is doing and where they’re going so you can support them and play together.”
Kassell said she agrees, but also notes a very different difficulty as well.
“On the field, it’s just knowing what’s going on and being educated in the play to know where everybody should be and what they should be doing,” Kassell said. “Off the field, of course it comes down to fundraising and us having enough money to go to these places.”
Because the rugby team is a club sport, it has to do its own fundraising so they are able to travel to places like New Mexico, Kansas, California and Louisiana to compete.
During the fall, the club does something called “Rent-a-Rugger” in which the players are paid a minimum of nine dollars per hour to clean, rake leaves and baby-sit. In the spring, the team holds a Fans and Fam Banquet, where they charge at the door and have silent auctions.
These fundraisers are essential to the team and show just how dedicated the players are.
With the money they raise and the hours they train, they hope to take their dedication all the way to the Final Four and into the National Championship.
“We have our heights set very high this year,” Kassell said.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Marlee Horn at Marlee.Horn@colorado.edu.
