Teddy Kaste-
The women’s rugby team is a club sport here at Gustavus. Rugby is a very popular sport globally, however, it is not as popular in the United States. To provide a little background on the game itself, Rugby is played between two teams, where the objective is to get more points than the other team. Points can be scored in a few different ways. A try is the primary way of scoring points, and is scored by grounding the ball in the goal line area (similar to a touchdown in football). A try is worth five points. Following a try, a team gets a chance at a conversion kick, (similar to an extra point), which is worth two points. A successful penalty, or “drop goal” kick (like a field goal) is worth three points.
Senior and rugby player Korri Wojack added some background information about the sport, “The ball can only be thrown backwards, so in order to gain meters you have to run it forward and muscle through their defensive line or evade their defenders entirely. While there is offense and defense, we don’t have particular players that come in or go off for it. When possession changes, we have to just quickly adapt. Another thing about rugby is there are no rolling substitutions, so unless it is for blood rule or an injury… once you’re out, you’re out. It’s a pretty chaotic and intense game, full of strategy as well as brute strength.”
For the rugby team, previous experience with rugby is not necessarily required to join the team. “No, I never had any previous experience before joining the team here at Gustavus. I had seen games on TV occasionally and always thought it looked really fun, but it wasn’t available in my area and I was already involved in so many other sports,” Wojack stated. In fact she likely wouldn’t have ever joined the team if it wasn’t for her Collegiate Fellow here at Gustavus.
“My CF that year, Pflugs, was a senior on the team and I recognized that she was on the team from the posters around campus. She was the one who first talked to me about the sport, and then she literally shoved a pen in my hand at the involvement fair and told me to sign up. I’m really glad she did,” Wojack said.
Joining the rugby team really transformed Wojack’s experience here at Gustavus. “The rugby team is everything to me. When I came to college, because it was Covid, I just felt like I had no community here at Gustavus. Admittedly, I was actually thinking about dropping out spring of my freshman year for many reasons, but was convinced to give it one more semester. I did, and it was one of the best choices I ever made. I joined the team and immediately felt community and support like I never had before, and I have met my best friends through this team. My physical health is better, my mental health is better -let’s be real, something about tackling people is pretty cathartic- and I could talk for hours about this team and everything it has given me. But, most of all, I am just incredibly thankful for this community that I know is a lifelong bond.”
The Women’s rugby team has played two matches so far, winning both. “Our first match was on homecoming weekend against the College of Saint Scholastica, which was a lot of our rookies first game. We had a lot of support from friends and family who came out to watch, and everyone played incredibly hard, ending with a Gustavus win,” Wojack said on the first match.
For match two, they traveled to Macalester to take on the Scots. Wojack said of the second match, “last weekend, September 30th, we traveled up to Macalester College. It was a pretty grueling eighty-minute fight, and Mac[alaster] was a challenge to push us as players and as a team. In the end, we took home another Gustavus win.”
The Gusties have only two more games left in their regular season: Moorhead on Oct. 14 in an away game, and NDSU on Oct. 21 for their final match of the season. When rugby picks back up in the spring they will be playing “sevens” (7 on 7), whereas in the fall they played “fifteens” (15 on 15) so the game will look drastically different.
The Women’s Rugby team, as demonstrated by Wojack’s comments, is a very tight knit group, that all work together to achieve victory out on the field. Something Wojack said that encapsulates the spirit of the team was, “A Maori proverb that one of our captains, Squirrely, sent to us before a game, which encompasses the energy of the team especially during a game: ‘He waka eke noa.’” Which translates to “The canoe which we are all in with no exception”.