Moments after receiving a rugby badge of honor–a size nine imprint of a cleat on her chest–Northwestern University sophomore Emily Bronyak struggled to her feet looking somewhat exasperated.
“It’s so hard to tackle people when they’re running in and out and all over the place,” she grumbled.
But the tackling is exactly why Bronyak is on the grassy field, competing in a bone-jarring sport with a bumper-sticker motto: “Give blood, play rugby.” Wearing a mouthguard, a T-shirt and shorts–but no pads–Bronyak routinely throws her body in front of stampeding opponents. The aggressive, physical nature of the sport and the team bonding are unlike anything she has experienced.
“After a tackle, it’s like you’re the most powerful person at that moment,” Bronyak explained.
“You feel almost invincible,” added teammate Courtney Nelson, an economics major from San Diego. “Like nothing can hold you back.”
Rugby, the most physical, full-contact sport women can play, is also one of the fastest-growing collegiate sports for women at the club level in the U.S. In Canada, women are flocking to the sport in record numbers.
But rugby isn’t the only traditionally male sport gaining popularity among females. Participation in contact sports in general is increasing among women, and they now are found in all the disciplines that Theodore Roosevelt once designated “true sports for a manly race: baseball, running, rowing, football, boxing, wrestling, shooting, riding and mountain climbing.”
Roosevelt didn’t mention ice hockey, weight lifting and judo, but these traditionally male worlds also are attracting women. In October alone, the fledgling Women’s Professional Football League debuted in Minnesota; Muhammed Ali’s daughter, Laila, started her boxing career; and the first boxing match between a man and a woman was held in Seattle, with Margaret MacGregor beating an embarrassingly underprepared Loi Chow.
“Aggressive” girls also are in the pipeline: According to a study from the National Federation of State High School Associations, nearly 800 girls played prep football in 1996; nearly 1,200 wrestled on men’s teams; and 1,340 played baseball.
Women cite many of the same reasons as men for playing contact sports: stress relief, adrenalin rush and camaraderie associated with team sports–especially rugby, which is as much a social ritual as it is an athletic event. They say they feel more confident, powerful
and responsible.
And they see aggression as different from assertion, though not unconnected. “Rugby is a combination of the two (behaviors),” said Kathy Slowinski, a junior at Northern Illinois University who learned the sport two years ago. “You have to be assertive to make the right decision on the field and aggressive to carry it out,” she said.
Ann Wilson, 26, a former figure skater who discovered ice hockey and now plays on co-ed and women’s recreational teams in San Francisco, said learning to be aggressive on the ice has made her more assertive in daily life. While she loves the body checking, the fast pace and the physical demands of the game, it also has helped her learn to relax.
“By releasing aggression in a managed way, within the space and rules of a hockey rink, it helps me control it in my off-ice life,” she says. “There’s nothing like a good game of hockey to work off the tensions of the day.”
Wilson also said she is less fearful of other people’s displays of aggression, both on the ice and off. “I can handle it if some big guy shoves me around on the ice, so if a big guy shoves me around in a crowded subway, I feel more prepared to deal with him,” she said.
But are women, traditionally perceived as better-behaved on playing fields and courts, growing inherently more aggressive? Women have testosterone–albeit in smaller amounts than men–but does soccer star Mia Hamm have more than Joan of Arc did? Or is there simply more opportunity for women to let loose with a bone-cracking tackle nowadays?
Sociologists tend to agree that women’s behavior, and men’s for that matter, is learned and shaped by society. Jo Ann Buysse, coordinator of Sport Studies at the University of Minnesota, cited a study by anthropologist Richard Sipes that found contact sports were popular in 90 percent of warlike societies and in only 20 percent of peaceful societies.
“I do not think testosterone levels have much to do with aggression,” said Buysse, adding that the terms aggression and assertion are often confused. “I think aggression is a learned behavior and the rewards for an aggressive act reinforce that behavior.”
Eastern Illinois University rugby captain Curly Alden, a former diver, believes the women of the 1930s would have been just as interested in rugby as the women of today if society had allowed it.
“Women play because they enjoy the challenge and they enjoy being recognized for what many consider to be a man’s game,” she said. “Women go out on the field and play their hearts out for themselves and their teammates. They get black eyes, broken legs, sprains and bruises. They do not play because they are more aggressive than women who sit home and knit blankets. They play because they love the game.”
At the edge of a new millennium, though, there’s still a double standard when it comes to women’s sports. An estimated 46,000 women play rugby in Canada, making it the fastest-growing female sport in the country, yet women say the bruises they get on the field are unacceptable in the corporate world. There remains a freak-show aspect to sports like women’s boxing. And when Women’s National Basketball Association players brawl, fans shriek about them shirking their duties as role models.
Many also fear that as money enters the picture in sports for women, they will follow the same path as men, from conduct on the court to coaching styles.
“Our culture is becoming more permissive. Antisocial behavior is overlooked–condoned in some cases–if winning is a result,” Northern Illinois sociologist Becky Lane said. “As women’s sports enter the high-stakes arena that men have held for so long, should we be surprised if women begin to display behaviors that push our limits of acceptability? Are women expected to conduct themselves at a higher moral level than men? Our culture has a long history of this.”
Ohio State’s women’s rugby club caused a stir recently when some players whipped off their jerseys for a team photo in front of the Lincoln Memorial. A Washington Post photographer happened by, and a photo–taken from a discreet angle–was published in the newspaper. The team was suspended from games pending a ruling from Ohio State officials, who cited concerns about safeguarding the university’s image.
Mariah Burton Nelson, who calls football and rugby two of the “most overtly misogynist sports” in her book, “The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football,” believes that women’s presence in any traditionally male domain can change it for the better.
“The more women play rugby and football, the less men will be able to say, `This is masculine, this is male, and men are superior because women can’t do this,’ ” she said. “That’s a good thing. We are changing, I hope, the nature of sports when we play them, bringing our female bodies and experiences to everything we do.”
Burton Nelson cited several concerns about women emulating men but added, “Men are bound to learn from women too when women appear in formerly male worlds, just as little boys learn from little girls on the soccer field. That is perhaps the most important part. Men will increasingly see women as their peers.”
In the meantime, the Northwestern women’s rugby team shares the practice field with the men’s team and hopes to start official club play in the spring with the Chicago Area Rugby Football Union, which includes women’s teams from Loyola University, University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northern Illinois University.
Players of all levels and backgrounds come out to practice, from Makenzie Brekke, a 5-foot-2-inch, 100-pound former gymnast, to Lindsay Hartman, a 6-foot, 170-pound former field hockey and lacrosse player.
“Once you’re out there you just play and you don’t think about being aggressive or non-aggressive,” said Hartman, 19, a linguistics major. But, she acknowledges, “it’s not a very dainty sport.”
And all the while the women are balancing their traditional roles with their newfound sport. “Once we baked cookies for the guys,” Hartman said, “but decided not to do it again because we thought that might be too girly.”
For this group of women, as their saying goes, a girl’s place is in the maul.
