Getting rugged: Bouchard, Lewis kick-start Mesa State women’s rugby team

from The Daily Sentinel:

The same sport for men is often played by a different set of rules for women.

Frankly, women are getting tired of it.

A rough-and-tumble group at Mesa State College is changing the notion that women can’t play as aggressively as men by starting a women’s rugby team.

“Even though they try to make it equal for men and women, they still make women’s sports wussier,” said freshman Bobby Bouchard. “Rugby is cool because they don’t do anything, we play the same amount of time as the guys, and the same rules as the guys.”

Bouchard and Mackenzie Lewis are ruggers who started the women’s rugby program after playing on the same select rugby team in Denver.

They didn’t plan to start a team in college. It just worked out that way.

Bouchard enrolled at Mesa to join her two sisters. Lewis wanted to play soccer.

“I was going to try out for the soccer team and things fell through with the coach, so I said, ‘I’ll play rugby,’ ” Lewis said. “I wasn’t quite ready to give it up.”

It didn’t take long for Lewis and Bouchard to figure out they still had more rugby to play. Once they decided to put a team together, a coach from their select team helped them get in contact with biology professor Kristy Duran.

“One of their coaches was a friend of mine that I played rugby with in Boulder,” Duran said. “She heard that (Lewis and Bouchard) were coming to Mesa and she gave them my name, and said ‘Get ahold of Kristy, she’d love to coach you.’ “

After the three met, Bouchard and Lewis vowed to get players together and start practicing. Bouchard and Lewis went dorm to dorm, room to room to recruit. They posted fliers all over campus.

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